Now that I know it's an inkwell I can see how it fits with the quill in the background, but it's not something that I would identify easily. The problem with our currency, from an artistic standpoint, is that they are putting function over form, when both (in my opinion) should be given equal weight. They take the old design, slap on new features that often don't blend well at all. Also, our currency does not have a uniform design scheme like it did when all the notes were small-portraits (now those were terrible in terms of identification and anti-counterfeiting but they were beautiful, in this case, form over function).
As for the Monopoly comment, Monopoly money is printed with two inks: one color and black. This makes them look cheap. We could easily make beautiful banknotes that incorporate many different shades of the same color to increase discernability. Also, when we redesign banknotes, the redesigns should be released at the same time!