A few interesting articles:
Quote:
While low-denomination bills were printed in fewer numbers last year, the $100 is wildly popular. Over the last several years, the number of printed $100 bills has spiked, from about half a billion printed in 2004 to almost 2 billion last year, primarily because it's so popular for investors to hold overseas.
Quote:
Despite financial innovations that have created important new substitutes for cash usage, per capita holdings of U.S. currency amount to $2950. Yet American households and businesses admit to holding only 15 percent of the currency stock, leaving the whereabouts of 85 percent unknown. Some fraction of this unaccounted for currency is held abroad (the dollarization hypothesis) and some is held domestically undeclared, as a store of value and a medium of exchange for transactions involving the production and distribution of illegal goods and services, and for transactions earning income that is not reported to the IRS (the underground economy hypothesis).
A large cash withdrawal prior to the Iraq invasion, apparently Saddam needed some "spreading around money":
Quote:
Saddam Hussein and his family took about $1bn (£620m) in cash from the Iraqi central bank shortly before the start of the coalition invasion, the US state department confirmed tonight.
The New York Times first reported the withdrawal saying Saddam's son Qusay and one of the toppled Iraqi president's personal assistants, Abid al-Hamid Mahmood, carried a letter from Saddam authorising the huge cash removal. They reportedly took $900m in American bills and $100 million worth of euros in three tractor trailers.
From an article a few years old:
Quote:
The US flew nearly $12bn in shrink-wrapped $100 bills into Iraq, then distributed the cash with no proper control over who was receiving it and how it was being spent.
The staggering scale of the biggest transfer of cash in the history of the Federal Reserve has been graphically laid bare by a US congressional committee.
In the year after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 nearly 281 million notes, weighing 363 tonnes, were sent from New York to Baghdad for disbursement to Iraqi ministries and US contractors. Using C-130 planes, the deliveries took place once or twice a month with the biggest of $2,401,600,000 on June 22 2004, six days before the handover.
Details of the shipments have emerged in a memorandum prepared for the meeting of the House committee on oversight and government reform which is examining Iraqi reconstruction. Its chairman, Henry Waxman, a fierce critic of the war, said the way the cash had been handled was mind-boggling. "The numbers are so large that it doesn't seem possible that they're true. Who in their right mind would send 363 tonnes of cash into a war zone?"
And another:
Quote:
A few nations besides the United States use the U.S. dollar as their official currency. Ecuador, El Salvador and East Timor all adopted the currency independently; former members of the US-administered Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (namely Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands) decided that, despite their independence, they wanted to keep the U.S. dollar as their official currency. Additionally, local currencies of several states such as Bermuda, the Bahamas, Panama and a few other states can be freely exchanged at a 1:1 ratio for the U.S. dollar. Finally, a number of nations have tied their currencies to the U.S. dollar - including Argentina (1:1 fixed exchange rate from 1991 until 2002), Lebanon (one dollar = 1500 Lebanese pound), Hong Kong (one U.S. dollar = HK$ 7.8 since 1983), and several more.
But the truth for us is usually a sign in the window of your local business that says "we do not accept bills larger that $20". Why is that? Well one reason is that a small business may not be able to make change for a hundred, but more importantly it is because they can't afford to take a counterfeit $100 note. I know there have been times where I only have a couple of hundreds in my wallet and may as well not have any money because I can't spend them anywhere.
Posted 09/11/2011 09:38 am
