9 Fascinating Facts about Money

this department. But the Secret Services job was actually to go after all the fake money that was in circulation, and in the process of this, they were targeting groups like the KKK. You know, these guys were perpetrating financial frauds against the government just left and right. And they'd also go around training law officials and educating consumers about things like fake bills. That's pretty crazy. So their focus

actually shifted over time. Yeah, so their duties changed when McKinley was shot and there was this clear need to protect the president, so Congress asked them to take that on. But you know, for decades, the Secret Service was actually part of the Treasury Department. In fact, at the time they launched, it's estimated that between one third to one half of the American money in circulation was counterfeit so

it's obviously one huge problem. Yeah yeah, But anyway, that's just the first of nine facts we've got today about money. So let's dive in. Y Hey, their podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined by my good friend Manges Ticketer and sitting behind that soundproof glass, organizing his monopoly money, but organizing it in a billful that I don't know if you've

ever played monopoly with Tristan. He honestly thinks the only way to carry around and organize his monopoly money is with this fancy billful that he has. But anyway, that's our friend, then produce her Tristan McNeil, So I go. I know we're talking about strange currencies and and things that are tangentially related to cash. But when we were talking earlier about how we were trying to raise money as kids, I forgot to ask you, did you actually collect an allowance as a kid? I didn't. It wasn't

how like my family functioned. And I don't know if that many Indian families and and kids that got allowance growing up, but I do know that my friends were always interested in like money, making schemes, which doesn't surprise me or I can imagine you doing this, but I'm curious, like, what, what are some examples of your your get ridge schemes? I mean, there were so many bad ideas that dog

magazine newspaper. I started with one of them. I remember, like when I was in second grade, my cousins and I always used to write plays and we'd force our parents to sit and wash them. But then we'd also ask for like money for the tickets, and that just feels like doubly bad for the parents who had to sit through these awful plays and I had to give

us a quarter to watch or whatever. But you know, my friend Howard and I had the ski and this is later, when we were in sixth grade, we saw that um Reader's Digest used to pay like fifty dollars or hundred dollars for jokes that they published, and we had this whole idea that, you know, we're these sophisticated sixth graders. Our jokes were far too good. But you know, maybe if we appirst the fourth graders got them to tell us their best jokes, then we could just turn

around and sell those direaders Digestros and Men's Profit. You know, we're kind of too wazy to actually enact it. But you know, when you think about it, it's not like Reader's Digest was just thinking, you know, we really need a lot of jokes about underwear and broccoli, and people submitted will just pay for all of them. So it really wasn't a well thought out scheme. Yeah, but pretty

funny actually. You know, our our friend Joe did that episode of Committed where the stories about this woman who falls in love and marries this homeless gentleman, and it's a great story, but you know, one of the parts I found most memorable was that he was always on the hunt for loose change. I remember them talking about this in the episode, that when they'd go on the walks, he'd always be looking down or looking around in different places,

and that's because he was always hunting for money. And he said he'd find something like eighty euros a week that way. So I was actually looking up a fact about this, and Americans actually throw out over sixty million dollars in coins every single year, which is staggering, Like, I can't imagine how rich we'd all be if we went home and searched our couches today, no kidding, Well that is my second fact this morning. So I think it's time to give you a turn. So what do

you want to kick things off with? Well, how about sticking with your counterfeit idea, and let's talk a little bit about super notes, which are a series of counterfeit fifty and more often hundred dollar notes. And these are super impressive. They're printed on this cotton fiber so they feel like money, and according to Slate, they have just the right amount of blue and red fibers in it. These are the features that the government uses for security, so it ends up being really hard to spot in

the wild. And you know, the government now has ways of detecting these, but for a while in the nineties and two thousand's it caused a lot of chaos, and the reason there in exist stince has been debated. So some people actually think it goes back to some printing equipment that the Shah of Iran bought from the US in the nineties seventies, and somehow that equipment was sold off to a different country and then duplicated elsewhere and

the government isn't sure where this started. But what we do know is who profited from the supernotes, and clearly that's North Korea. Officials actually believed that the rogue nation has made over twenty five million dollars by printing and circulating the fake currency. And in fact, just last year there were these newly printed notes discovered at a South Korean bank and it's made authorities nervous that the North

Koreans are added again, Well, I'm gonna stick with that theme. Actually, just read this an article about this that Adobe Photoshop actually detects if you're trying to edit an image of currency and it won't let you manipulate it or or print it, which is, you know, actually pretty smart. And apparently the website hyper Allergic discovered that when they tried to scan a Canadian five dollar bill into the system. This was a few years ago, they did this story.

They even detect the bill where a minister on the note was altered to look like spock and so it wouldn't let the author pull the image in And actually this is true for a lot of international currencies. That's really cool, Like, I don't think I realized that that software in particular was capable of deciphering what you're working on. But I do feel like if you're a dumb criminal, like photoshop and Xerox machines are the first place you're

gonna go, right, Definitely, definitely. So speaking of international currency,

here's a cute one. So a couple of years ago, there was this petition online that was circulated to rename the Australian dollar and people wanted to call it the dollar we do, which I can is based on a Simpsons just Simpsons, yeah, and I love it, but you know, the Australian site nine dot com pointed out that this actually isn't the first time that the Australian government has ignored suggestions for renaming the money, even though they got

fifty signatures. So way back in the sixties, Australia stopped using the pound and they switched to a new currency and at the time, the government decided to crowdsource ideas a currency name, and the public came up with a lot of ideas and here's part of the list. They wanted to call it the oz, the koala, the emu, the boomer, the kanga, the rue of course, the dinkum, which is my personal favorite, and the quid spelled k w I d for some reason. I guess that's Australian

for Quinn. But the government, of course, in the end just settled on Australian dollar. I'm glad they did such a big brainstorm to come up with the Australian dollar. But all right, well, I gotta really gross one here. You know, I'm kind of a germophoe. But this was a two thousand seventeen study and researchers were taking these one dollar notes and they would swab them, and they got these from a bank in New York City, and what they were trying to do was just to see

what was living on these bills. And they found hundreds of species of micro organisms, which isn't that shocking, But they found things like E. Coole I, Salmonella bacteria from people's private which is I don't really know exactly all this, the clubs all these one time, I don't I don't know where they're coming from. But anyway, one of the most abundant was actually the strain that causes acne. Oh

that's so gross. Also, money is so dirty. I think about this all the time because, uh, you know, I used to work as a cleric and video store and and people are always hand you change and I remember just counting quarters. At the end of it, my hands would be filthy. It was so gross. Yeah, it's pretty it's pretty gross. So you know, the research shows that bank notes that use plastic polymers, and these are like

the ones they use in Canada and also Australia. I think they end up being much cleaner than the US bills, which is really interesting. I I do wonder if people have clearer skin in those countries as a result, if they're not typing, don't have to conduct a study. Well, here's the fact that I like, have you ever heard

of brook shares burke shares? So this was a currency that got started in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, and this was in two thousand and six, and the idea was that they wanted to have their own regional currency to encourage people to buy locally. So you can actually take your federal currency, which is U S dollars and and then go to one of the five regional banks there that supports this and exchange for one Berkshire and the idea is that you'll spend more in one of the

four local shops that accepts it. The idea is to promote I don't know, like like buying from your local toy store over Amazon, or supporting like the farmers markets or whatever, and then foster community in the process. And I don't know, it's a really fun idea. But another aspect of it that's interesting is because the money's new, Uh, you can put whatever you want on it. So some of the bills have Mohicans on them. Uh, they've got a W. E. B. Du Bois, Norman Rockwell is on

the bill. I don't know, I haven't seen these, but but they seem really fun. Huh. All right, Well, I know we've got a couple more facts to go, but why don't we take a little break first. You know, during the break you and I were talking about how we both have so many one line facts that belong in this category. So I feel like we should change the format a little bit here. I hope it doesn't make listeners too dizzy if we do this, but we're gonna abandon that commitment to just nine facts and maybe

do a little rapid fire back and forth. What do you say? Yeah, I'm totally for this, So why don't I kick it off? Do you know that Teddy Roosevelt hated putting the phrase in God we trust on money. He actually thought it was sacrilegious. Well. Ben Franklin, I know, would agree because the first coins he printed were engraved with the phrase mind your business. I love the idea of mind your business, our money. So some of the first American coins, known as half times a k Nichols,

were made from Georgie and Martha Washington's recycled silverware. Isn't that amazing? That's pretty cool? Yeah, do you know you can actually help reduce the national debt by donating money to the US Department of the Treasury. They actually accept donations, and every year, believe it or not, a lot of people actually donate. Do we do We need to like link to a ghost fund me so that people can know how to donate to the to the Treasury. I'm sure people will be racing to give money to the Yeah.

So US bills used to be considerably larger, and people often referred to them as horse blankets. So I know you're probably curious about this. If you want to use in a sentence, you might say something like, do you have any horse blankets on you? I need to get some fredos from the vending machine. Yeah, I'm pretty sure

that's that's exactly what you would say. But all right, Well, the highest denomination of US currency that's ever been produced is the one hundred thousand dollar gold certificate, and they made it for a very short time in the nineteen thirties, you know, around the time of the Great Depression. Seems like a great time to make a one hundred thousand

dollar gold certificate. So Larry Summers, who used to be the Treasury Secretary, I'm sure you remember him from his work at Harvard, He's pushed this idea that the government should discontinue the hundred dollar bill because it makes agal transactions so much easier. So there's people pushing for removing

the penny from circulation and the bill. That's interesting, all right, Well, apparently the bill with the shortest lifespan of any denomination is the ten dollar bill, and that's because it gets handled the most. So a typical ten dollar bill will only stay in circulation for about four and a half years. That's crazy. I've actually read that it takes something like four thousand double folds on a bill for it to tear. But uh, how's that compared to other bills, which is

actually just think about that. That's one more reminder of just how many people are touching a bill over some period of time. You know, it surprised me a little bit because I didn't realize that the ten dollar bill was the most handled until I saw that fact recently, or you know, passed around the most. I would have thought it would have been the one, but the one last for about a year long or so, about five and a half years in circulation. Uh. Well, here's what

I like about Rembrandt and how gullible he was. Apparently his students used to regularly punk him by painting fake coins on the floor just to watch him try to pick them off. I have to wonder, like how long did this work for? I mean, I understand being gullible and falling for it once maybe twice, but then you start to get in there like why are you still falling for this territory? But anyway, that's an amusing fact. So I feel like I want to give this round

to you terrific. And actually I was gonna ask for more money facts from our listeners, and we just got one yesterday by coincidence from the wonderful Beverly Macintosh, and this is what you wrote in In Britain, wealthy people were usually buried inside the church under the stone floor. As the bodies gassed off, the smell would come up through the floor, thus instigating the phrase stinking rich. So

I love that. I feel like phrase origins are always a little murky to to, you know, decipher, but I really like that story and just how disgusting it is. So that's a great story. Everly check your mail because we want a pony express you something fun And for the rest of you out there, keep sending in those facts from Will Tristan, me and the rest of us a part time genius. Thank you so much for listening to the