Who’s designing our money?  Parker Brothers?

In an effort to thwart counterfeiters, the new and improved $5 bill went into circulation yesterday.  It seems to me that it would be futile trying to counterfeit $5 bills!

Reuters reports:

The bill features a large, purple numeral “5″ on its back side and a purple seal on the front, continuing the increased use of color in the “greenbacks” that have long stood in drab contrast to the more elaborate bills used by many other countries.

The new bill, which will go into circulation in 2008, will include two watermarks — a large numeral “5″ to the right of the portrait of President Abraham Lincoln, and a column of smaller “5″s to Lincoln’s left.

An embedded security thread, bearing the letters “USA” and the numeral “5″ in an alternating pattern, runs vertically to the right of the portrait.

The new features should thwart a favorite technique of counterfeiters — bleaching the ink out of existing $5 bills and printing them to look like $100 bills, U.S. officials said in an online press conference.

“It’s a matter of holding up this bill to the light and looking for the two watermarks,” said U.S. Treasurer Anna Escobedo Cabral. “The public really is the first line of defense against counterfeiters.”

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