European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - September 2, 1990, Darmstadt, Hesse Stateside views a is Ocolor of Money need not be Gree Charles Osgood Tribune Media service there Are proposals to change the color of Money. In the United states paper Money is Green. It has always been Green. In other countries you May find Blue or Brown or red currency. In some there Are different colors for different denominations and different sizes too. But in the United states All our Bills Are the same size and Are printed with the same color Ink. Hence the nickname Greenback. Americans Are suspicious of any paper Money that Isnit Green. If it Isnit Green we done to think of it As real. It seems like play Money monopoly Money. As a consequence when we visit abroad we tend to spend yen francs Marks or lire More freely than we would spend something Green with a portrait of a president on it. Instead of thinking of a Price As $375, say we think of it As two big yellow ones three pretty Little Fuschia ones and one Lavender. There Are two separate proposals to do for Green Money what Ted Turner did for old Black and White movies. Both plans Are designed to strike a blow at the drug dealers and Money launderers who manage to beat the system by a a laundering their currency abroad. What happens is that almost All drug deals Are made in Cash and drugs Are a $300 billion business. The . Currency Laws Are restrictive so the traffickers smuggle the Cash out of the country to places where there Are no currency controls or if they exist they Are very weak. There the Money is deposited in a Bank and becomes a a washed or one plan suggested to the Treasury by the drug enforcement Agency is that two forms of currency be printed. One would be Legal in the states and the other would Only be Good overseas. You Trade one form in for the other except at an american controlled Bank. The other plan is one advocated by a former Treasury Secretary and former White House chief of staff Donald Regan. Regan thinks the government should print new Bills of different colors or perhaps Green on one Side but some other color on the other. This would be sprung on the Public with no More than 10 Days notice or so. Within that time you a have to turn the Green Bills in for the Pink or Blue ones. The Banks would make a record of every Exchange Over $ 1,000. That Way anybody holding a huge Hoard of ill gotten Cash would either have to declare and explain it or watch their treasure lose All its value. Regan suggested the colonization of american Money a decade ago when he was Treasury Secretary. But the suggestion was rejected by Treasury officials on the grounds that the idea was a just dreaming fanciful and not what this reflects in a afraid is the old american prejudice the notion that if Money Isnit Green it Isnit serious unusual inventions that received patents electrical bedbug exterminator in 1898 chewing gum Saver 1889 balloon propelled by Bird Ltd wings 1887 Boomerang bullets 1870 tapeworm trap 1854 goggles for fowl 1903 a receptacle for saving gum so it could be chewed again source . News amp world report5 who auditioned for the monkeys in 1965 Charles Manson songwriter Paul Williams Harry Nilsson Danny Hutton of three dog night Stephen stills a rejected because of Quot bad Teeth and receding hairline Quot source cult to folklore a ways to avoid dying done to sing in bed never shave at night never place a Broom on a bed keep cats off piano keys never add to Back of House done to count cars in funeral motorcade never Cook own birthday dinner source the old Farmer s almanac september 2, 1990 sunday c Page 3
