FINAL WARNING: Financial Background
Service described plans for making changes in Federal Reserve
Notes beginning in 1985 (although the long range target is
1988) ... These changes, which will probably include taggents,
security threads, and colors, and may include holograms,
diffraction gratings, or watermarks, will be made in coordination
with six other nations: Canada, Britain, Japan, Australia, West
Germany and Switzerland. Japan, for example, will begin recalling
its present currency in November, 1984, and have it nearly
completed within six months ... According to the government, the
only reason for the currency changes is to deter counterfeiting.
Although it was admitted by one spokesman in the group that
there would have to be a call-in of our present currency for new
currency to work, the spokesmen for the government were
adamant in saying that there was no other motive for a currency
change...”According to law, only the Treasury Secretary has the authority to
change the currency.Over $3 million had been spent under ‘counterfeit prevention’ authority
for the development of the new money, which according to the
Currency Design Act (HR6005) hearings would be issued by the
Federal Reserve Board. It was first reported by the Patterson
Organization in Cincinnati, Ohio, that in a July, 1983 market survey in
Buena Park, California, people were shown proposed designs for “new
U.S. dollar bills.” The variations shown, consisted of each
denomination being a different color; Federal Reserve seals replaced
with a design utilizing reflective ink; and other optical devices like
holograms (a process which produces a three-dimensional image
which can change color depending on the angle it is viewed), and
multilayer diffraction gratings (similar to a hologram); as well as bills
containing metal security threads, and planchettes (red and blue
colored discs incorporated into the paper, similar to threads) to trigger
scanning equipment which would detect its presence, and to sort cash
faster. A consumer research firm from Illinois was hired by the
Treasury Department to gauge the public’s reactions to the various
designs.It was shown that a drastic change would not be accepted, so a
process of incrementalism was adopted. It was decided that the