welcome to the jong-il

"i make the purple bring the green"
- 50

this week the treasury announced the new purple and green five-dollar bill.



this new bill looks like a well-drawn weed leaf. i remember when i was a kid i thought to myself "the most outlandish combination of colors has got to be purple, orange, and green. i should avoid placing these three colors in close proximity." the government is an orange pumpkin away from making this the craziest bill in the world.

this is the first of (i'm sure) many measures designed to make earning a living harder for counterfeiters, and the first of (i'm sure) many measures that will take our currency closer to but not quite as far as other multi-colored currencies like the AUD.

who's the biggest counterfeiter of USD you ask? the democratic people's republic of korea, known to the layman as north korea. to clarify: motherfucking kim jong-il is the biggest counterfeiter of american currency. possibly the world's only remaining producer of supernotes (essentially indistinguishable $100 bills), he has produced at least hundreds of millions of US dollars. a year ago, $50 million in supernotes had been confiscated, which should give a picture of a fraction of his operations. Dear Leader uses this dinero to maintain north korea's only fleet of benzes, a 7000-car stockpile sitting in some warehouse in pyongyang. he is also rumored to annualize USD0.7M in hennessy expenses. the bastard.

what a guy.

extra credit:
the times
wikipedia