Check Please! This Bill Still Doesn’t Look Right

If the U.S. Treasury Department thought we’d all get over it, it was wrong. The redesigned $20 bill, which debuted in September 1998, looks almost as weird to people now as it did then.

A new poll by Coinstar, which makes coin-counting machines and is deeply interested in American currency, finds 43% of Americans still think the “new” bill looks like funny money, cartoon currency dreamed up by Pokemon inventors and sold to tots in toy stores. In a 1998 Gallup poll, 61% of respondents said the new bill “doesn’t look like real money.”

Of course it doesn’t. America wants deeply green bills, designed with impeccable balance and elegant authenticity. The new version, with lots of white space, a new view of the White House and a large, off-center presidential portrait, has a kind of Looney Tunes font and off-kilter design elements. The artists in charge of this post-modern money didn’t even balance all four corners of the bill--leaving the user with a vague sensation that either he or the designers may be dizzy. What does it all mean? Claudia Dickens of the Bureau of Printing and Engraving said the redesign is one big anti-counterfeit measure, and people are still calling one year later to register dissatisfaction.

Sticklers complain that President Andrew Jackson’s hand is missing from the new bill, whereas it was visible before. Others can’t get used to the lack of balance. Why is there a kooky number 20 on the lower right, they ask. “That number 20 has special color-shifting ink which cannot be photocopied,” Dickens said. “Hold it straight up, and it looks green. Tilt it, and it’s black.”

There are at least nine other publicly announced anti-counterfeit details in the new bills, she says, and others that are not being announced.

So . . . bottom line? Be happy--don’t worry. Money itself may disappear in time, some say. With computer chips embedded everywhere, all transactions will be electronic.