The Fed Has a $110 Billion Problem with New Benjamins

[boomerang]

http://www.cnbc.com/id/40521684

A significant production problem with new high-tech $100 bills has caused government printers to shut down production of the new notes and to quarantine more than one billion of the bills in huge vaults in Fort Worth, Texas and Washington, DC, CNBC has learned.

An official familiar with the situation told CNBC that 1.1 billion of the new bills have been printed, but they are unusable because of a creasing problem in which paper folds over during production, revealing a blank unlinked portion of the bill face.

1.1 billion folks. Now for the ADHD generation I will reiterate. That number is not the value of the currency, that's how many bad bills were produced. Anyone that has ever had even a minor exposure to a production environment knows that is an enormous fuck up. You just don't produce 1.1 billion of anything without doing quality checks. It's unheard of. You especially don't do it when you start manufacturing a new product.

According to a person familiar with the matter, the bills are the most costly ever produced, with a per-note cost of about 12 cents—twice the cost of a conventional bill. That means the government spent about $120 million to produce bills it can’t use. On top of that, it is not yet clear how much more it will cost to sort the existing horde of hundred dollar bills.

$120 million dollar mistake - and counting. It's the government. Anyone think any heads will roll? We all know the answer to that question.

 

[bruceb]

It was in yesterday's news on Yahoo. Typical govt screw up. They should done just a small run. say about 100 sheets or so to check everything, then ramp up to expected output.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Somebody should get fired! Oh wait, this is the government.

 

[dullard]

It doesn't sound like it is too big of a problem. According to other sources, the bills with the printing problem are rare, the misprinted area is small and only noticible when you tug both sides of the bill. Thus, during testing prior to printing, the issue was never discovered.

They'll have a machine sort the bills in a few months, then back to business as usual.

I say let the all bills out. The ones with errors will be a great collectors item.

 

[dainthomas]

It doesn't sound like it is too big of a problem. According to other sources, the bills with the printing problem are rare, the misprinted area is small and only noticible when you tug both sides of the bill. Thus, during testing prior to printing, the issue was never discovered.

Shhhh! The anti-gubmint crew is having too much fun!

 

[bamacre]

What is ironic is that our gov't goes through such hoops to make sure the money is not counterfeited. Then across the street, there's another gov't agency responsible for counterfeiting the money.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Eliminate paper money, then we only have to multiply values in a database to inflate our debt away.

 

[boomerang]

What is ironic is that our gov't goes through such hoops to make sure the money is not counterfeited. Then across the street, there's another gov't agency responsible for counterfeiting the money.

What's really insane is having previous versions of the bill still accepted as legal tender. The whole process is one bordering on insanity.

There is no value in all the effort put forth to make our money exponentially more difficult to counterfeit if the old bills are still accepted.

 

[silverpig]

Eliminate paper money, then we only have to multiply values in a database to inflate our debt away.

Very temporary stopgap. SS is indexed to inflation AFAIK.

 

[werepossum]

What's really insane is having previous versions of the bill still accepted as legal tender. The whole process is one bordering on insanity.

There is no value in all the effort put forth to make our money exponentially more difficult to counterfeit if the old bills are still accepted.

LOL Very good point.

 

[trenchfoot]

What's really insane is having previous versions of the bill still accepted as legal tender. The whole process is one bordering on insanity.

There is no value in all the effort put forth to make our money exponentially more difficult to counterfeit if the old bills are still accepted.

On top of that, the counterfeiters are given all the time they need to disburse their "old" fake money, while developing the technology to counterfeit the "new" fakes using profits from selling the "old". Their workflow won't skip a beat.

 

[Darwin333]

It was in yesterday's news on Yahoo. Typical govt screw up. They should done just a small run. say about 100 sheets or so to check everything, then ramp up to expected output.

You would think, and I know this is just a wild thought, that regardless of what they were printing some asshole would go and inspect a few somewhere in between the first one and the billionth one. How the hell do you do a billion of anything without it getting inspected at some point?

On a side note, defective or not, is it really smart to report the location that we are storing $100B in US paper? I guarandamnedtee you that with that kind of cake on the line I can figure out a way to make em passable. If some asshole like me can likely figure it out then someone with much more resources and desire can do it as well.

 

[piasabird]

So maybe we need to fire whoever is responsible for this?????

 

[Darwin333]

On top of that, the counterfeiters are given all the time they need to disburse their "old" fake money, while developing the technology to counterfeit the "new" fakes using profits from selling the "old". Their workflow won't skip a beat.

Why even bother trying to counterfeit new bills?

I get old (pre big head) $100 bills all the time and the spend just the same as the new ones.

 

[Modelworks]

I think that as Americans we need to do our part. Every one of us should go to the mint and take away those $100 bills and sort them and dispose of them to save the government the burden.

 

[Darwin333]

So maybe we need to fire whoever is responsible for this?????

I say we take 80% of their paycheck until they payback all costs incurred.

 

[Modelworks]

You would think, and I know this is just a wild thought, that regardless of what they were printing some asshole would go and inspect a few somewhere in between the first one and the billionth one. How the hell do you do a billion of anything without it getting inspected at some point?

That is the part that I do not understand. Every documentary I have seen on printing of money , and I have seen a lot of them, they have a person that goes over a sheet from every production run , several times a day. That person has a huge magnifier and does nothing but inspect the prints. Surely they would have noticed it in one day or less.

 

[trenchfoot]

So maybe we need to fire whoever is responsible for this?????

*Conspiracy Alert* Whoever set this train wreck in motion is hoping that's exactly what happens to the person that got set up for it. :sneaky:

 

[airdata]

No big deal...

The fed can just print more money.. Hell, may as well put the bad bills into circulation with the new correct bills. Might as flippin well.

 

[trenchfoot]

Why even bother trying to counterfeit new bills?

I get old (pre big head) $100 bills all the time and the spend just the same as the new ones.

I'm just guessing that the old worn bills will be culled out from wear and be replaced with the new ones, making the old ones, and especially the newly counterfeited "old ones" more conspicuous and suspect.

 

[PokerGuy]

1.1 billion is a huge amount, no matter what item it is. That's a LOT of screwup.

 

[Darwin333]

I'm just guessing that the old worn bills will be culled out from wear and be replaced with the new ones, making the old ones, and especially the newly counterfeited "old ones" more conspicuous and suspect.

When did the big faces come out again? Evidently it takes longer than that.

 

[Zedtom]

Professional printers monitor their runs to literally stop the presses when something goes wrong. Ink spills, paper jams, and equipment malfunctions are usually detected by the machines themselves long before an operator intervenes.

Why do federal employees get away with massive screw ups that would never be tolerated in the real business world?

 

[Darwin333]

1.1 billion is a huge amount, no matter what item it is. That's a LOT of screwup.

No. A LOT of screwup would have been 1,000 or so. A whole lot of screwup would have been 1,000 sheets or so considering multiple prints per sheet. A whole FUCKING lot of screwup would have been a few thousands sheets.

We need to invent an entirely new term for one billion fuckups because I have never heard of such massive fucking up in one place at one time, except for the Congress/Senate and perhaps the Fed of course.


Oooh, I got it, we can call it a "Federal fuckup" defined as "any fuckup that involves fucking up more than a billion things". Whatcha think?

As a side note, it will only take our Government (just the Feds) 10 or 11 days to spend all of that. I wonder how many tractor trailers it would take to haul all of that cash.

 

[drebo]

The new design is completely unusable, now. They'll need to redesign it, just in case some were leaked out into circulation.