Isn't that why actual money has all those fancy strips and bumps? Canada just introduced $100 polymer notes this week. It's even partially transparent. Good luck faking that with consumer-grade laser printers. (Color inkjets might work better on transparent sheets.)
As long as there's older-style currency in circulation, a forger only has replicate those bills and not the new hotness... currency only tends to last a few years in active circulation (at most) but I'd assume that many people will still accept a bill from a style printed 10 or 20 years ago.
Generally when there is a major change to a currency (such as the move to polymer banknotes [an awesome Australian invention] in Australia 15 years ago) the old style bills only remain in circulation for a short period, perhaps a year or so.
Within a couple of years, the old style notes become so exceptionally rare in everyday transactions that the presence of one raises eyebrows, and is inspected carefully. While our older style notes are technically still "legal tender", I doubt you'd find a single retailer across the country that would accept it.
Less than that if there's a major disruption that casts doubt on the legitimacy of more than 5% of the money supply.
The classic case was the huge Northern Bank robbery in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 2004 -- the thieves stole around 7% of all the Northern Bank banknotes in circulation (currency in NI and Scotland is issued by banks that possess a license to print money, not by a nationalized institution like the Federal Reserve). It was cheaper for the bank to reissue the entire currency and cancel the old banknotes than to trouser the loss, so within 4 months the stolen notes were worthless except as toilet paper:
Once there's a noticeable proportion of forged coinage or banknotes in circulation public confidence in the currency drops like a stone. At that point, the only option is to recall and replace.
The reason this hasn't happened in the USA is because there are so damn many dollar bills in circulation -- around $829Bn as of 2007. The cost of recalling and reissuing that little lot would be distinctly non-trivial ...
For the classic currency-catastrophe-caused-by-forgery, you need to read up on the Portuguese banking crisis of 1925, one of the biggest currency frauds in history:
That's because there has not been a disruptive change in USD banknotes for a very long time. And it's desperately needed -- their cotton paper notes are just crap.
The Australian switch to polymer meant an entirely new suite of banknotes which bear almost no resemblance to the paper ones they replaced.
At this point there's a decent installed base of automated bill-reading machinery, though. Not that these ought to be sacrosanct or anything, but the cost and inconveniences associated with a rollout of new bills is substantial.
People will complain about anything. Americans have very odd sentimentality towards their notes and coins, as if history itself will be rewritten when a change is made in the present.
The classic example is the penny. Get rid of it! You can still collect them and read about them on wikipedia, you just won't have to deal with them while buying your double cheeseburgers any more.
In Britain they won't. Our bank notes are officially withdrawn a few years after they are replaced with a new design at which point they can only be exchanged for new ones at banks. Even then I think there is a cut off point of ten years or so where you have to take your notes to the Bank of England if you want them exchanged for legal tender.
Why on earth would anyone bother forging Canadian currency?
Just ribbing on ya :p
It is true, there are other preventative measures, but any one measure can be beaten. It's like computer security- any computer can be hacked, it's just a game of making it hard enough to hack that it is not worth it, or takes too long.
Sure, any anti-counterfeit measure can be beaten, but it is certainly possible to design banknotes in such a way that consumer-grade printers can't produce anything remotely resembling a real banknote. Then there will be no excuse for spying on citizens' everyday printing activities.
The fact that this alternative is not even on the table adds to the impression that the U.S. government, as usual, is trying to use Big Bro techniques as a quick fix instead of coming up with real solutions.
BTW, I'm not sure if anyone prints fake Canadian money, but a few years ago some dude in Germany tried to print millions of dollars worth of fake Canadian Tire money :)
I really doubt the government is regularly spying on your printing. The whole thing really seems like a very small issue to me. It just gives printers a "fingerprint" that can be referenced if needed.
I suppose if "fingerprints" are so bad, we should probably outlaw ballistic analysis linking a bullet to the gun that fired it?
> I really doubt the government is regularly spying on your printing.
For some values of "the government" not including many governments; see $OPPRESSIVE_REGIME.
There's a lot of stuff "the government" does now that would have been unthinkable before various terrorist bombing attempts. Really, forcing everyone to remove their shoes before boarding a plane?
And, if you doubt that the US[1] spies on its own citizens you should have a look at the Echelon programme, where a legal loophole was used by the US to gather intelligence on its citizens. (The US gov can't do it legally, so they pass a name onto another gov involved in Echelon.)
As a Canadian I can't stand your attempt at humour (sarcasm++).
The Canadian mint actually produces a lot of coinage for other countries, is one of the most advanced in new techs, etc. They tend to sell out all of their collection coins, especially the large gold ones (including a 1kg coin).
The game of making it hard enough/expensive enough to have it not worthwhile is the goal of every currency. The new 100$ bill definitely succeeds.
Interestingly the new polymer notes are made (or licensed) from Australia, who has had the notes since 1994, and make polymer notes for all the countries using plastic money (there are about 5 at the moment, including Vietnam and New Zealand).
Of course Australians invented the plastic notes so they could go surfing with their wallets.
