By Daniel B. Wood, Staff writer / April 21, 2010
A hundred dollar bill? "Dottie," a Starbucks cashier, says she almost never sees them.
“Maybe, once in a month someone will pull one out,” she says, placing four tall lattes into a cardboard carrier. “Otherwise, no way Jose.”
After a quick spot query of the café shows that not a single person has one in his or her wallet, the question arises: Why is the US's new $100 bill necessary?
The quick answer, say banking experts, is that $100 bills are the most common use of American currency by foreigners. Two-thirds of all $100 bills are in foreign pockets. Therefore, international counterfeiters feel they can get away with bigger sums of fake cash in the far reaches of Europe, Africa, and Asia – not to mention being far from the spotlights of law enforcement.
“The necessity of such a move can be easily debated. Counterfeiting of US currency is quite a big deal, especially in markets outside the US,”, says Scott J. Dressler. Assistant professor of economics at Villanova University’s School of Business.
US Secret Service spokesperson Edwin Donovan says the $100 bill is a favorite of foreign counterfeiters. “It’s in the most exotic, far away and non-domestic locales abroad where this activity goes on most,” he says.
Among the many new high-tech security features, a blue ribbon will give a 3-D effect to micro-images on the bill. Tilt the note back and forth and you will see tiny bells on the ribbon change to 100s as they move. And that's one of the reasons for the new design. “You can check these features without holding the bills up to a special light,” says Mr. Donovan.
While the added security features should thwart counterfeits of the new note for the time being, the old note will remain in circulation and can still be counterfeited, Mr. Dressler says. “While the old notes get retired, counterfeiting becomes more difficult. Therefore, you can think of this as the beginning of the end for counterfeiters - until they can successfully pass off a counterfeit of the new bill.”
The perception that paper money is on the way out as consumers opt for debit and credit cards is incorrect, says Chad Wasilenkoff, CEO of Fortress Paper, which produces high quality security paper including bank notes and passports. "Contrary to popular opinion, banknotes, which are commonly known as 'paper money,' 'bills,' or 'notes,' are more in demand than ever across the globe," he says.
The design of the new bill was unveiled Wednesday, but won’t appear in circulation until February, 2011.
“As with previous U.S. currency redesigns, this note incorporates the best technology available to ensure we’re staying ahead of counterfeiters,” said Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner, at the unveiling.
Those still in possession of the old-style bills needn't do anything, officials say. “When the new design $100 note is issued ... the approximately 6.5 billion old design $100s already in circulation will remain legal tender,” said Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board Ben S. Bernanke. “U.S. currency users should know they will not have to trade in their old design notes when the new notes begin circulating.”
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Benjamin L. Hooks, Civil Rights Leader, Dies at 85
By STEVEN A. HOLMES
Published: April 15, 2010
Benjamin L. Hooks, who for 15 years led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People as it struggled to remain an effective champion of minorities in an era of rising political conservatism, died Thursday at his home in Memphis. He was 85.
Leila McDowell, a spokeswoman for the N.A.A.C.P., said the cause was heart failure.
“Black Americans are not defeated,” Mr. Hooks told Ebony magazine soon after he became the association’s executive director in 1977. “The civil rights movement is not dead.
“If anyone thinks that we are going to stop agitating, they had better think again. If anyone thinks that we are going to stop litigating, they had better close the courts. If anyone thinks that we are not going to demonstrate and protest, they had better roll up the sidewalks.”
Yet under his leadership the N.A.A.C.P. faced a growing white backlash against school busing and affirmative action programs intended to redress past discrimination. And it repeatedly tangled with the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush to preserve the gains that minorities had made in the 1960s and ’70s. When Mr. Bush selected a conservative black federal judge, Clarence Thomas, to serve on the Supreme Court, the N.A.A.C.P. ultimately opposed the nomination.
“I’ve had the misfortune of serving eight years under Reagan and three under Bush,” Mr. Hooks said in 1992, the year he stepped down as executive director. “It makes a great deal of difference about your expectations. We’ve had to get rid of a lot of programs we had hoped for, so we could fight to save what we already had.”
Mr. Hooks shifted much of the N.A.A.C.P.’s focus to increasing educational and job opportunities for blacks as recession gave way to economic recovery in the Reagan years. But the association had been weakened under the weight of declining membership and shaky finances.
It had also developed an image problem, as that of an outmoded and increasingly irrelevant civil rights group. For some who had watched the N.A.A.C.P. over the years, Mr. Hooks came to symbolize an older generation of leaders who had marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and who had fought for the passage of landmark civil rights legislation but who had become unwilling or unable to adapt to modern times and changed political circumstances.
Mr. Hooks rejected that notion, maintaining that he had succeeded in advancing a just cause, to improve the lot of African-Americans. “I have fought the good fight,” he said in his valedictory to the N.A.A.C.P. in 1992. “I have kept the faith.”
Mr. Hooks had a varied career. He was a lawyer, a businessman (he owned fried chicken franchises in Memphis that ultimately failed) and a Baptist minister, heading two separate churches. He was also a gifted orator, mixing quotations from Shakespeare and Keats with the cadence and idioms of the Mississippi Delta.
“There is a beauty in it and a power in it,” Mr. Hooks once said of black preachers’ speaking style.
Mr. Hooks was the first black to be appointed to the criminal court bench in his native Tennessee, and he was the first African-American to be named to the five-member Federal Communications Commission.
“Most people do one or two things in their lifetimes,” Julian Bond, a former chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., said of Mr. Hooks. “He’s just done an awful lot.”
Benjamin Lawson Hooks was born Jan. 31, 1925, in Memphis, the fifth of seven children of Robert and Bessie Hooks. His father’s photography business gave the family a stable middle-class grounding, allowing Mr. Hooks to attend LeMoyne College in Memphis. But he knew well the indignities blacks suffered in the segregated South.
“I wish I could tell you every time I was on the highway and couldn’t use a restroom” because it was reserved for whites, he once told U.S. News & World Report. “My bladder is messed up because of that.”
After serving three years in the Army during World War II and rising to staff sergeant, Mr. Hooks attended law school at DePaul University, graduating in 1948.
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Dennis Hevesi contributed reporting.
Published: April 15, 2010
Benjamin L. Hooks, who for 15 years led the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People as it struggled to remain an effective champion of minorities in an era of rising political conservatism, died Thursday at his home in Memphis. He was 85.
Leila McDowell, a spokeswoman for the N.A.A.C.P., said the cause was heart failure.
“Black Americans are not defeated,” Mr. Hooks told Ebony magazine soon after he became the association’s executive director in 1977. “The civil rights movement is not dead.
“If anyone thinks that we are going to stop agitating, they had better think again. If anyone thinks that we are going to stop litigating, they had better close the courts. If anyone thinks that we are not going to demonstrate and protest, they had better roll up the sidewalks.”
Yet under his leadership the N.A.A.C.P. faced a growing white backlash against school busing and affirmative action programs intended to redress past discrimination. And it repeatedly tangled with the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush to preserve the gains that minorities had made in the 1960s and ’70s. When Mr. Bush selected a conservative black federal judge, Clarence Thomas, to serve on the Supreme Court, the N.A.A.C.P. ultimately opposed the nomination.
“I’ve had the misfortune of serving eight years under Reagan and three under Bush,” Mr. Hooks said in 1992, the year he stepped down as executive director. “It makes a great deal of difference about your expectations. We’ve had to get rid of a lot of programs we had hoped for, so we could fight to save what we already had.”
Mr. Hooks shifted much of the N.A.A.C.P.’s focus to increasing educational and job opportunities for blacks as recession gave way to economic recovery in the Reagan years. But the association had been weakened under the weight of declining membership and shaky finances.
It had also developed an image problem, as that of an outmoded and increasingly irrelevant civil rights group. For some who had watched the N.A.A.C.P. over the years, Mr. Hooks came to symbolize an older generation of leaders who had marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and who had fought for the passage of landmark civil rights legislation but who had become unwilling or unable to adapt to modern times and changed political circumstances.
Mr. Hooks rejected that notion, maintaining that he had succeeded in advancing a just cause, to improve the lot of African-Americans. “I have fought the good fight,” he said in his valedictory to the N.A.A.C.P. in 1992. “I have kept the faith.”
Mr. Hooks had a varied career. He was a lawyer, a businessman (he owned fried chicken franchises in Memphis that ultimately failed) and a Baptist minister, heading two separate churches. He was also a gifted orator, mixing quotations from Shakespeare and Keats with the cadence and idioms of the Mississippi Delta.
“There is a beauty in it and a power in it,” Mr. Hooks once said of black preachers’ speaking style.
Mr. Hooks was the first black to be appointed to the criminal court bench in his native Tennessee, and he was the first African-American to be named to the five-member Federal Communications Commission.
“Most people do one or two things in their lifetimes,” Julian Bond, a former chairman of the N.A.A.C.P., said of Mr. Hooks. “He’s just done an awful lot.”
Benjamin Lawson Hooks was born Jan. 31, 1925, in Memphis, the fifth of seven children of Robert and Bessie Hooks. His father’s photography business gave the family a stable middle-class grounding, allowing Mr. Hooks to attend LeMoyne College in Memphis. But he knew well the indignities blacks suffered in the segregated South.
“I wish I could tell you every time I was on the highway and couldn’t use a restroom” because it was reserved for whites, he once told U.S. News & World Report. “My bladder is messed up because of that.”
After serving three years in the Army during World War II and rising to staff sergeant, Mr. Hooks attended law school at DePaul University, graduating in 1948.
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Dennis Hevesi contributed reporting.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Fla. Gov. Charlie Crist goes from shoo-in to political freefall
By Michael Leahy
Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, April 16, 2010; 2:45 PM
THE VILLAGES, FLA. -- Republican Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, once regarded as a shoo-in to become Florida's next senator, waded into a milling crowd. If his campaign had been going according to plan, his audience here on this night would have been perfect: an elderly, largely conservative Republican throng that included 82-year-old Bob Gammon, who had voted for Crist before and now had a beer in his hand and something he wanted to say.
Crist smiled and put a campaign sticker on Gammon's Hawaiian shirt.
"That hug," Gammon said.
"Oh," Crist said, immediately understanding what Gammon meant. Shortly after Barack Obama's inauguration, the new president had come to Florida to pledge federal help for this economically reeling state -- and Crist had reacted by embracing Obama on stage. "I wish you hadn't hugged him," Gammon said.
"I'm glad I did," Crist said calmly, smoothing the sticker on Gammon's shirt. "He was visiting our state. He's the president. I respect the office."
"I really wish you hadn't," Gammon said. As he moved away, leaving Crist to answer more questions about the hug, he predicted the outcome of Crist's upcoming August Republican primary: "He can't win."
If you're Charlie Crist, this is what a political freefall feels like. One day it is 2008 and you're a popular governor whose Republican admirers are talking you up for the veep spot on your party's national ticket. Then, suddenly, you've infuriated party conservatives, and what you're being fitted for is a political coffin.
According to polls, Crist was once ahead by about 30 points in a primary contest widely viewed as a certain rout, a steppingstone for the 53-year-old Crist toward a bigger national stage and a future White House run. Now, targeted for extinction by "tea party" activists and the right-wing of his party, Crist is behind by more than 20 points, yet another reminder of the intraparty dangers awaiting Republicans viewed as too moderate.
"A victim of the times," is how Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida, characterizes his collapse.
Questions about Crist's political character and loyalty have added to his woes. He was dealt another blow this past week when former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani went on Fox News to say that Crist had lied to him in the months leading up to the Republican presidential primaries in 2008.
Giuliani claimed that Crist, whose endorsement was regarded by GOP candidates as critical in the pivotal Florida primary, had reneged on a private promise to endorse Giuliani for the Republican nomination. It is a charge denied by Crist, who ultimately endorsed Arizona Sen. John McCain, the party's eventual nominee.
"He broke his word, which to me in politics is everything," said Giuliani, who told Fox host Sean Hannity that he is endorsing Crist's front-running Republican primary opponent, former Florida House speaker Marco Rubio,, a 39-year-old tea party darling.
CONTINUED
Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, April 16, 2010; 2:45 PM
THE VILLAGES, FLA. -- Republican Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, once regarded as a shoo-in to become Florida's next senator, waded into a milling crowd. If his campaign had been going according to plan, his audience here on this night would have been perfect: an elderly, largely conservative Republican throng that included 82-year-old Bob Gammon, who had voted for Crist before and now had a beer in his hand and something he wanted to say.
Crist smiled and put a campaign sticker on Gammon's Hawaiian shirt.
"That hug," Gammon said.
"Oh," Crist said, immediately understanding what Gammon meant. Shortly after Barack Obama's inauguration, the new president had come to Florida to pledge federal help for this economically reeling state -- and Crist had reacted by embracing Obama on stage. "I wish you hadn't hugged him," Gammon said.
"I'm glad I did," Crist said calmly, smoothing the sticker on Gammon's shirt. "He was visiting our state. He's the president. I respect the office."
"I really wish you hadn't," Gammon said. As he moved away, leaving Crist to answer more questions about the hug, he predicted the outcome of Crist's upcoming August Republican primary: "He can't win."
If you're Charlie Crist, this is what a political freefall feels like. One day it is 2008 and you're a popular governor whose Republican admirers are talking you up for the veep spot on your party's national ticket. Then, suddenly, you've infuriated party conservatives, and what you're being fitted for is a political coffin.
According to polls, Crist was once ahead by about 30 points in a primary contest widely viewed as a certain rout, a steppingstone for the 53-year-old Crist toward a bigger national stage and a future White House run. Now, targeted for extinction by "tea party" activists and the right-wing of his party, Crist is behind by more than 20 points, yet another reminder of the intraparty dangers awaiting Republicans viewed as too moderate.
"A victim of the times," is how Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida, characterizes his collapse.
Questions about Crist's political character and loyalty have added to his woes. He was dealt another blow this past week when former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani went on Fox News to say that Crist had lied to him in the months leading up to the Republican presidential primaries in 2008.
Giuliani claimed that Crist, whose endorsement was regarded by GOP candidates as critical in the pivotal Florida primary, had reneged on a private promise to endorse Giuliani for the Republican nomination. It is a charge denied by Crist, who ultimately endorsed Arizona Sen. John McCain, the party's eventual nominee.
"He broke his word, which to me in politics is everything," said Giuliani, who told Fox host Sean Hannity that he is endorsing Crist's front-running Republican primary opponent, former Florida House speaker Marco Rubio,, a 39-year-old tea party darling.
CONTINUED
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