The Nation : New Currency Hits Snag

The Treasury Department said that technical problems will force up to a two-year delay in issuing the first redesigned U.S. currency in a half-century. The government had planned to start issuing the newly designed $1, $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 bills this fall. But U.S. Treasurer Katherine D. Ortega said that problems have arisen in securing adequate supplies of the paper with the woven polyester thread in the quantities needed by the government, which prints 6 1/2 billion new bills each year. Design changes, which include adding a tiny plastic thread and microscopic printing around the portraits, were designed to thwart a new generation of color copying machines.