quote unquote

Man: "Well, baby, now we're poor again."

Woman: "No, we're BROKE again. We were already poor."

                     -- Overheard at Santa Fe Savers check-out.

Red to Blue?

The NRCC outraised the DCCC in January, hauling $10.1 million compared to the House Democrats’ $9.3 million. Both hauls broke their previous January records. The NRCC ended with $50.6 million in cash on hand, while the DCCC ended with $43.8 million (HuffPost/Washington Times). The DCCC named six more candidates to its Red to Blue program, bringing the total number in the program to 24: former State Department adviser Lauren Baer in FL-18; state Sen. Jeff Van Drew in the open NJ-02; former Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion official Andy Kim in NJ-03; attorney Xochitl Torres Small in the open NM-02; retired Naval commander Elaine Luria in VA-02; and former state Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown in WA-05 (RollCall).

From the How Things Really Work Desk:

Madoff Investors Keep Billions in Profit (this is from a NYTimes email)

The company led by the American billionaire Koch brothers, along with dozens of banks and fund managers, kept billions of dollars in profit from Bernard L. Madoff’s Ponzi scheme in accounts offshore.

And, it turns out, the funds can stay there.

They had invested in the Madoff fund from offshore accounts, and a judge said that certain funds held abroad, worth an estimated $2 billion, could not be made available to victims of the Madoff scheme.

The judge said foreign bankruptcy proceedings blocked the trustee from gaining access to the money. Koch Industries began investing in the Madoff fund well before its collapse and pulled out $21.5 million in 2005.

The money went to a fund registered in the British Virgin Islands and then to a Koch entity in Britain. They were not alone.

Several European banks also had Madoff money offshore, according to court papers, including HSBC, UBS, Credit Suisse, an international arm of Merrill Lynch and the French money manager Natixis.

The rest of the story:

Alexander Hamilton Will Share His Space on the Ten-Spot -- U.S. Treasury

This is only the beginning of changes to our currency, according to the Treasury Department.

In 2020, Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, Alice Paul, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sojourner Truth will appear together on the back of the $10 bill, and Marian Anderson, Eleanor Roosevelt and Martin Luther King will be honored in a group portrait with Abe Lincoln on the $5.

Rumors are unconfirmed that the $2 bill will feature all the people on the cover of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Punditry

Here's a handy list of blogs edited by The Economist:

• Analects | China
• Americas view | The Americas
• Babbage | Science and technology
• Bagehot's notebook | British politics
• Banyan | Asia
• Baobab | Africa
• Blighty | Britain
• Buttonwood's notebook | Financial markets
• Charlemagne's notebook | European politics
• Clausewitz | Defence, security and diplomacy
• Democracy in America | American politics
• Eastern approaches | Ex-communist Europe
• Feast and famine | Demography and development
• Free exchange | Economics
• Game theory | Sports
• Graphic detail | Charts, maps and infographics
• Gulliver | Business travel
• Johnson | Language
• Leviathan | Public policy
• Lexington's notebook | American politics
• Newsbook | News analysis
• Prospero | Books, arts and culture
• Schumpeter | Business and management

Small Change: Does U.S. currency have to be boring?

Our paper money has been homely for so long, you almost think it has to be that way. And maybe it does; getting this dull, deeply conservative country to change anything is nearly impossible. I once suggested that the government is missing revenue opportunities by not selling ad space on U.S. currency. The mail response was hilarious: you would have thought I'd advocated dressing the Mall with billboards for strip clubs that took advantage of the profile of the Washington Monument; except for a few anti-tax types who immediately recognized a worthwhile proposal when they heard one, most people reacted with horror to the idea of "defiling a sacred institution."

Anyway, in response to the The Dollar ReDe$ign Project, artist and designer Michael Tyznik created this lovely and relevant series of U.S. paper basing his design on the premise that our dough is "aesthetically lacking." American banknotes, he explains,

are in dire need of a redesign. Even though the green color of money is deeply interwoven into the nation's culture, the need for color differentiation between denominations has forced the inclusion of color. The recent redesign of banknotes by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing is poorly executed and aesthetically lacking. Because the coloring of the current notes is so subtle, it is still hard to differentiate between denominations by that method alone.

My proposed redesign keeps the culturally important green color of money, but introduces a brightly colored holographic strip into each denomination, making them easy to tell apart. This strip includes embossed dots for the sight-impaired as well, making currency far more accessible.

Although these elegant bills are a big improvement graphically beyond what's in your pocket, the artist's best innovation is on the reverse side:

One of the most important things about America is our Bill of Rights. It is possibly the most important information any citizen can have. The design of our money currently contains semi-religious (the eye in the pyramid) and overtly religious (“In God We Trust”) symbols and text that go against the incredibly important separation of church and state implicit in the first amendment. In my redesign, these are replaced with the text of the Bill of Rights. It has been proposed that these ten amendments are in order of importance, so it is fitting that the most important rights are included on the most common banknotes.

You'll note that Tyznik also wants to recalibrate our money: The $1 bill, he says,

lasts only 21 months before it needs to be replaced. For this reason, I propose that the $1 banknote be eliminated in favor of the current $1 coin and a new $2 coin. For this reason, Washington is depicted on the $5. I also propose the discontinuation of the penny, because it currently costs more to produce one than it is worth. This is precedented by the elimination of the half-penny in 1857, after which the smallest unit of currency, the penny, had more buying power than today's quarter does.

I think it's a measure of how seriously we need a redesign that Snopes had to go out of its way to deny that Treasury commissioned the project or planned to use it as a replacement for our current forms of U.S. legal tender.

Reagan Currency

(Los Angeles, California) Ron England has amassed 3.6 tons of copper in his garage in the Los Angeles suburb of Granada Hills after making a bet with his brother 30 years ago that he could collect 1 million pennies. But neither the U.S. Mint, the U.S. Comptroller of the Currency, coin collectors nor the local bank is interested in cashing in his stash — at least not without a charge. (Reuters)

It is proposed that Ronald Reagan be remembered -- in addition to having roads and bridges, parks and airports in every county named for him -- by placing his likeness on a denomination of federal currency. The one drawback to this idea is that all the spots on U.S. cash are already taken. Putting President Reagan on a coin or bill would require eliminating a personage already there.

However, the desire to commemorate the former president by having his likeness on legal tender need not be achieved at the expense of earlier heroes, such as Alexander Hamilton and Andrew Jackson. Partisans of these worthies (even of Samuel P. Chase) are digging in their heels already for what promises to be a nasty fight. It would be regrettable to have the memorably cheerful chief executive associated with unnecessary unpleasantness when there is an alternative plan that will not only salute President Reagan, but also help the nation to solve a pressing problem: namely, what to do about the costly and nearly valueless one-cent coin.

Penny-anti campaigns have foundered in the past largely because those Americans who most frequently come into contact with the specie -- convenience store workers and others in primarily cash businesses -- have been found in studies to be confounded by the concept of rounding off. Rather than subject 7-11's customers to endless arguments over the amount of change due them, the government has chosen to keep the coins circulating, this despite the fact that, as the tragedy of poor Ron England reveals, no one wants them. Besides, as inflation continues its relentless course even in the best of times, soon enough there will come a day when pennypinchers will begin fingering the "useless" one dollar bill instead.

A Reagan currency presents an unparalleled opportunity to pay tribute to the popular leader in a way that honors him as a creative and forward-looking chief executive while achieving the fix for the penny problem that has eluded federal accountants for decades. In addition, this proposal will forever hang the president's portrait on the wall of innovation: The Ronald Reagan $14.99 bill.

Reagan paper will be a boon in the retail marketplace (what to call it -- the gipper? the ronnie? -- must be left to the collective decision of its users). For merchandise that has a sticker not matching the denomination, buying higher-priced items will be simple and mathematically fool proof: for $19.99, add a five; $24.99, add ten; $34.99: hand over a Jackson and a Reagan. No muss, no fuss and, most important, no change. For items less than $10, the gipper (for now) would be even more consumer-friendly. Use a gipper for an item priced at $9.99, get a fin back; use it to buy something costing $4.99 and get a sawbuck as change.

Besides lessening the reliance on pennies, which have become so useless that store owners leave bowls of them by cash registers and they can be found in stacks by pay phones, the gipper would save countless employee hours now consumed by making change and tallying, reconciling and wrapping Lincolns at end-of-shift. As gippers become more common, retailers will be encouraged to convert more prices to the $**.99 standard, further extending its benefits. Once the gipper's usefulness is demonstrated, in those jurisdictions where sales tax is a fact of life many merchandisers will be inspired to include the levy in the price of goods, conveniencing consumers even more.

Of course, not everything can be priced $**.99, and the gipper is not proposed as a total solution to the penny problem. But if it does its job, the need for pennies will be vastly reduced. Who knows, someday the Lincoln copper coin might be so rare it will be worth something again.