Friday, July 11, 2008

The Currency We Deserve

A post something like what I might have written months ago had I had time...

The new US $5 bill. I got my first one a few months ago. That big purple 5 in block lettering in the lower right on the back really jars pretty badly with the classic ornate engraved design characteristic of US currency. Formerly characteristic, that is. This 5 looks like it should be on the uniform of some new expansion sports team with bad color sense - should we expect the next bill redesign to feature teal?

Of course, the trend of making US currency in the colors of Monopoly money is entirely apropos, considering the value of the currency in the world is heading in exactly that direction.

On closer inspection, poor taste isn't the only reflection of modern America that's been incorporated into the latest currency designs. The five also has a distinct purple tinge, like it's been soaked in the Kool-Aid we've all been asked to drink. The ten and twenty both appear to have been soaked in something red - perhaps an attempt to use tomato juice to get rid of the skunk stink of the US image in the rest of the world? Or just Iraqi blood? The other amusing new feature pioneered on the twenty was the snow of little numbers falling around the White House. Should we take that to be a nod to President Bush the Lesser's drug of choice, or the static in his mind?

US notes used to be classic and distinct, the traditional and unchanging styling echoing the stability of the dollar, the reference currency of the world economy. For my money (pun intended), the old $2 bill, featuring an engraving of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on the back, is the finest piece of currency ever designed. Multicolor, multisize notes were for the rest of the world. To me, they all look like toy money. They say hyperinflation - the same Yugoslav dictator appearing in subsequent printings on otherwise-identical bills with extra zeros added each time.

Well, if this is where we're going, might as well stop worrying and love the ugly purple bomb.

-- Satan

3 comments:

Mauigirl said...

I am SO in agreement about this. I hate all of the "new money." No more "greenback dollars" for us. Monopoly money is right. It's just hideous.

Ubermilf said...

Wait, we're still a country?

I thought we'd been bought out already.

Satan said...

Well, they haven't foreclosed on the mortgage yet.