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There's been yet another major snag in the Federal Reserve's mission to introduce the hundred-dollar bill.
This time, a printing error called "mashing" – when too much ink is applied to the paper – has rendered 30 million bills totally useless, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) confirmed to the New Yorker's David Wolman.
"This time, recent batches of cash from the Washington, D.C., plant contained 'clearly unacceptable' bills intermixed with passable ones, according to a July memo to employees from Larry Felix, the bureau’s director," Wolman explains. "So the Fed is returning more than thirty million hundred-dollar notes and demanding its money back, Felix wrote. Another thirty billion dollars’ worth of paper sits in limbo awaiting examination, and Fed officials have informed the bureau that they will not accept any hundred-dollar notes made at the Washington, D.C., facility until further notice."
This is only the latest in a string of screw-ups that have kept the $100 bill out of circulation well past its original 2011 due date. Another printing error caused bills to be printed with a blank spot. And just a year ago, thieves made off with a massive shipment of the new bills.
Now, the Bureau is on damage control, sprinting to meet an October 8 deadline to get the notes printed – correctly – and finally into circulation.
A BEP spokesperson told BI they are "investigating this issue to determine the root cause" and will start by re-inspecting the notes to sift out any tainted ones."
"The $100 notes returned to the Bureau of Engraving and Printing had a small proportion of notes affected by mashing, which were included with many, good, quality notes. It’s expected only a marginal fraction of the notes will be unacceptable," the spokesperson said.
In the meantime, taxpayers will likely be left to pick up the tab for disposing of the bills and whatever extra time is needed to print them again.
Just in case you're sick of waiting for the new bills to arrive, here's a mock-up of what the new bill will look like.
It's going to be tricked out with colors that change when you bend it, an image of the liberty bell, and a new blue, 3-D anti-counterfeit strip hidden inside.
Mandi Woodruff Editor Mandi edited the personal finance vertical for Business Insider until October 2013. Before joining BI, she covered breaking legal news for Law360.com, was a research editor at Reader's Digest, and reported on education in her home state of Georgia.Her work has appeared in Yahoo! Finance, Daily Finance, The Wall Street Journal, The Fiscal Times, The Christian Science Monitor and the Financial Times, among others. Read more Read lessncG1vNJzZmivp6x7o8HSoqWeq6Oeu7S1w56pZ5ufonyxvsinq6Kml2K2tL%2FUnmSrnZ6ZsrO%2FjGxnZqWZobmqu81mpZ6vXWZ9cXnBoqOlq12qwKa4xKyqZmpgZoBuhA%3D%3D