Doesn't seem like a big deal.

I just can't picture Honest Abe in purple. Ugh.

Taco Bell is taking over the government.

they don't stay in my wallet long enough for me to notice

Oh, man. Please U.S. Mint, please don't do this to my money. There's GOT to be a better way to counterfeit-proof my money. Why can't we go to plastic money, like Australia? Their money actually looks pretty cool, albeit a bit rainbow-y for my taste. Maybe each of the bills could be a different shade/hue of green, if we need to go the multicolor route?

Protective measures are one thing, but there has to be a better way than making my cash look like a bloody bowling shoe, or like five different kinds of baby food mixed together. Please, do it for Abe.

American currency will soon be indistinguishable from Monopoly Money.

When did Barney become the Secretary of the Treasury???

why can't all of our money be pretty and colorful like other countries? it would make paying for drugs in the dark so much easier. lolz. i kid.

but i would like pretty colorful money. the purple thing doesn't bother me. it's avant garde currency.

I miss how the currency USED to look 10 years or so ago. Now we have all kinds of odd colors & designs. :(

In that specimen shot it looks like someone spilled something on it.

Purple goes pretty badly with green... let's bring back the 1896 $5 bill! Even a full color adaptation of it would be much better looking than this new one.

The 1896 $5 and others:
[www.frbsf.org]

If they keep tinkering with the look of currency, it will be increasingly easier to counterfeit. Who can keep up with this?

Counterfeiters today know that cash is not the easier hit -- it's business checks, For $10 you can general checks for any business and use them effectively with trusting people Read: "The Art of the Steal" if you own or are responsible for a business, very informative.

Don't they realize that the original bills with no fancy graphics/colors are still in circulation? Why would you try to make these funny new ones when you can easily print out the old ones. Our government seems to be completely out of touch.

Go the European way! Different colors AND different SIZES for each denomination.

@MYarms: When new bills are introduced, the old bills are gradually pulled from circulation as the mints receive them. It’s a slow process, but it works.

@BugMeNot2: Yeah! That'd be great, the old bills were works of art - although I think we should change the heads to those of the presidents currently featured on the bills, instead of miscellaneous mustachioed men that most people can't identify (or maybe they can? I never had an American History class).

Perhaps with less of that charming 'nuclear glow' green. But apart from that, definitely.

Purple and Green! WOO HOO!!! Joker Money!

As a recent immigrant from the UK I am constantly worried that in a dark bar or cab I'll be counting out a pile of ones and accidentally slip a twenty in. I'm so used to having notes which are a different size as well as color.

@holocron: Where does he get those wonderful toys???

This bill needs one thing: GLITTER!

Oh sure, the gay president gets purple.

As the parent of a vision-impaired kid, I think it's great. It's not an incredible expense to produce the new bills once the Mint gets them up and running, and will help a significant portion of the population. What's not to like?

Where is the poll option for "looks like ass"? Maybe the idea is to make the most horrendous looking bill possible so counterfeiters won't want to counterfeiter it.

Seriously, are there still counterfeiter out there? I thought the "cool" way was identify theft. A lot easier to harvest some stolen creditcards and just go to an atm than get a machine / process of generating money fake money.

@eskilla:

Guy on left is Ulysses Grant (Civil War general / president). Dunno about guy on right.

@Landru: unlikely. they got the $20 & the $10 right, but the $50 should be blue instead of pink & the $5 should be pink instead of purple.

First, off, it's very ugly. But that's another story for a different message board. The big Helvetica "5" is dumb. And is that a swarm of bees about to attack the Lincoln memorial?

That being said, I understand that they need to protect our precious 5 from the evil Chinese and Iranian pressman who churn our currency out all day on their high tech Xerox presses.

But we've been using the same style and size currency now for almost a century, and this "new" design doesn't do any of the crap they actually say it will. There aren't any real designers creating this shite. If they really wanted to create a new design for the currency, they should hire some designers to take care of it. And no, not just to make it look pretty.

It still does not touch on some pretty significant problems that have already been addressed by the currency in other countries. These problems have absolutely nothing to do with "counterfeiting" either. Besides, with the dollar so low, who the hell would want to counterfeit our bills anyway? (sarcasm)

All of the US currency does not currently have any sort of tactile *anything* on the note. Why is this needed? So blind people and vision impaired folks don't get ripped off. All the bills we have are identical in size, printing method, and color.

Back in 2006 there was an interesting comment made by a Federal Judge declaring that US currency "shortchanges" the blind (pun intended, I'm sure). Read the article here: [www.washingtonpost.com]

This is also an issue that has been raised by the design community. Why has our government been so lax on this? It's been conjectured that the psychology of the "greenback" is simply too much to completely change.

The new dollar also has no other technological *anything* in it to protect it from counterfeiting. Sure, you can microprint incantations and use polyurethane/beeswax based ink till the cows come home. But my Big Mac has an RFID in it and can be read by card scanners. Just check out the EURO. [www.fleur-de-coin.com]

But seriously, the current state of the dollar makes me wonder if it's not time for a *complete* refresh. My guess is that this is just a minor update to the currency that's been in the pipe for a while. And what better time to remind us about our money than now, when it's at a historical low?

@Landru: and why not? it's got about the same worth!

@BugMeNot2: guy on the right is philip sheridan, leader of the army of the shenandoah.

people don't counterfeit $5 bills (it's not worth the cost). counterfeiters take $5 bills, chemically process them to remove the ink & reprint larger denominations on them ($100, $50, $20). that is the purpose of embedding color dyes in the paper for the new bills. the big purple 5 is just so people don't get confused.

lol to the comment about mixing them up with 50's.
Just don't carry anything larger than a 20 :)

@weakdome: $1000 in 20's folded in half is more than 1/2" thick - not that i carry a g in my billfold, but i know a few folks who do.

@AstroPig7: Right, but pulling old real bills from circulation would not stop a merchant from accepting a counterfeit of the "old" design. There's no cutoff date for accepting old currency, is there?

You know I understand why the mint is making new designs for the bills - so it will stop counterfeiters.

.... and hopefully I don't give ideas to counterfeiters, but why not just counterfeit the older bill designs? People still use the new & old designs, and now that people don't see the old design as often because of the new design, it would probable be easier to slip in a counterfeit bill..... in my opinion

As long as my credit card isn't all *insert your own word for absurd looking* then it doesn't matter to me. it is just a bill.

@BaysideWrestling: My kid is visualy impared too (has ONH and SOD) and I agree with you about the large number being a good thing.

As for the rest of the bill-- who cares what it looks like? Do you coordinate your wardrobe with your money?

Just a bill...

I got an old $20 from the bank recently, and it just about blew my mind. Suddenly, THEY look like Monopoly money. Just wait until the old $5 starts to look fake.

At my firm, one of the girls who works for me found a $100 bill in an old file that had holes punched into it. We are not sure how it got in there but she was curious on whether or not it was still legal tender. It still had the serial numbers showing and any of the other identifying factors on the bill. She took it town to the bank downstairs in our building to find out if it was still legal tender. She showed it to one teller and they said she wasn't sure but it was probably still good and so she asked another bank employee. The other bank employee said no because it was mutilated. A manager jumped in took the bill and examined it in the light and said it would be legal tender.

Finally someone else jumped in with an opinion, took the bill from the manager's hands and rubbed it on a sheet of white paper and the paper was clean. "It's a fake" and hands it back to my employee. He explains that the ink on dollar bills never truly dry and that if you smudge the ink on paper it will always make a mark. My employee tells me the story and am rather surprised they gave it back to her. I thought banks were supposed to call the Secret Service or something whenever they encounter a counterfeit bill. Right now the fake $100 bill with holes punched into it is taped to my employee's window waiting for one of the cleaning people to steal it and pass it at the local liquor store. We can't wait.

That bill that BugMeNot2 posted really is beautiful. I'd take that one!

I really think we're overdue to start mixing up the sizes of our currency for the sake of the blind. I could not possibly care less what it looks like other than that.

God forbid they make the money harder to counterfit. And as someone pointed out, the new features on the $5 are to keep people from bleaching $5s and printing them like $100s. Yes, that means in a few years there will be a new $1 bill too. Well, except they'll probly just switch to the $1 coins by then. And then you people will whine about that too, won't you?

Great, another updated bill that won't work in a change machine.

@BugMeNot2:
We need all our money with naked women on it. That will really piss off the muslims, they won't touch it then.

@coan_net:
@eskilla:
The Mint has nothing to do with paper money, it's the Bureau of Engraving & Printing that's responsible for paper money & stamps.
The Mint makes coins only.

First they came for our 20s, and I said nothing. Then they came for our 10s, and still I said nothing ...

Yeah... we can do without the purple. And to help the blind tell the difference? Riiight... I don't think so. The numbers are textured. I have blind relatives, and they can tell the difference between a 5 and a 50 no problem. (Much to my dismay during my younger years.)

I kind of like the purple/green combination. *shrug*

@mac-phisto: People do actually attempt to counterfeit low-denomination bills. At the Federal Reserve Bank here in St. Louis, the workers who sort the money will tape possibly fake bills onto the window. When I was there, it was a bunch of $1 bills.

Counterfeiting is hard, but people are still stupid.

@Landru: And just as valuable.

Ok, you all are usually calling OUR money "monopoly money" and I was hoping to have a laugh at you all but... my Zod that's ugly.

[Our $5 Bill] uses bigger numbers (and braille-like dots) and still manages to have a little dignity. There ya go, Sir Wilfred Laurier looking all sleek and some kids playing hockey on the back.

I could deal with it if it weren't so large and perhaps symmetrical.

JamesBenjamin is right - this is primarily to defeat counterfeiting, specifically bleaching. Notes can somewhat easily be bleached to remove all the ink, then another denom printed on them. $100s and $5s are both the "new old" style - before a box of Froot Loops threw up on them. This makes it easy to bleach a $5 and print $100 on them. There's still the security strip, but few people check for the proper location (they're pretty close anyway). These will fool 99.9% of people who would accept those bills.

Still, we're lightyears behind Australian, European, and Canadian notes. Those have different sizes, braile-ish dots, strange color patterns, UV and magnetic patterns, and in some cases clear plastic windows in the bill itself. Of course, these techniques tend to reduce durability.