Think the Fed is printing too much money, too fast?
Think again – at least in the case of the redesigned $100 bill. The Federal Reserve said Friday it won’t begin distributing the bill next February, as planned, because of “a problem with sporadic creasing of the paper during printing.”
The government said in April it would start using a new $100 bill to make counterfeiting harder. The bill has security features that should over time reduce the number of fakes.
As big a problem as counterfeiting is, it isn’t the biggest liability for the Fed nowadays, with many commentators bashing the central bank over its apparent embrace of another round of quantitative easing, in which the central bank creates funds to acquire Treasury securities and push down interest rates.
The Fed said the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which manufactures U.S. paper money, is working to fix the problem. The Fed hopes to announce a new date soon.
