There’s apparently more than one way to mess up money.
Canada’s new plastic banknotes don’t work in all vending machines, I hear … and there’s a less practical problem with the new C$20 note: It has the “wrong” maple leaf on it.
Some botanists are complaining that the stylized leaf logo is not Canada’s native species, but one hailing from Norway.
I’ve not seen one of these bills up close (donations would be appreciated, though), but from the photo, the thing I’d be worrying about is that the Queen, on the basis of her appearances on bank notes, looks more like Dwight D. Eisenhower every year.
Here in America, our Washington insiders mess up money both symbolically and substantively.
In the old days, before president-worship had become something of the country’s official religion, Liberty was represented by female representatives or Indians. (The fact that the U.S. government killed off and hounded remaining populations of native Americans in that time put the latter practice into some cognitive dissonance.) Now, both coins and notes feature dead presidents. Frankly, I think we should junk the presidents and go back to stylized, classical representations of Liberty.
The biggest symbolic problem is having Andrew Jackson, America’s most successful and vehement anti-central banking president, placed on our central bank’s $20 note.
That’s an insult, not an honor.
Another way to mess up money is to devaluate it by over-printing.
Or creating too much credit. Or good old-fashioned seignorage. With the Quantitative Easing and “trillion dollar coin,” we’ve got these last two covered. Alas.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.