Circulate a Mistake: Fed Must Decide Fate of Flawed $50 Bills
That's the value of an estimated 30 million of the newly redesigned S50 bills it has sitting in bank vaults around tile country. The bills are among the first that came off the presses at theBureauof Engraving an d Printing this year. But after Federal Reserve officials spotted a minor printing flaw on the bills, the Fed said it may not place them in circulation.</br></br>The,errorÛÓsaid to be visible to the naked eyeÛÓconsists of gapsinthetinyconcentriclines behind the enlarged portrait of President Ulysses S. Grant on the bills.</br></br>Those lines are among the anti-counterfeiting devices designers at the bureau have worked into anew scries of high-tech currency that the Treasury Department is introducing. ÛÏThis series of fine lines is very difficult to reproduce with color copiers, computer scanners and other traditional printing technologies,Û theTreasury Department said when the first of tlie redesigned currencyÛÓthe $100 billÛÓwas introduced in late 1995.</br></br>Bureau spokesman Larry Felix said such flaws as the broken lines are notunusual in other bills. But since the new $50 bill is supposed to represent the best currency printing in tlie world, officials at the Fed are reluctant to introduce a bill with an obvious flaw.</br></br>ÛÏSome donÛªt look too bad," said Fed spokesman Joseph R. Coyne. He said banking officials want to study the error longer before deciding whether to release tlie bills.