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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
Welcome to Civil Discourse. This podcast will use government documents to illuminate the workings of the American Government and offer contexts around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life. Now your hosts, Nia Rodgers, Public Affairs Librarian and Dr. John Aughenbaugh, Political Science Professor.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I'm good. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I'm thinking about doing some engraving today. I'm going to develop a new skill set. What do you think?
N. Rodgers: I think that if you're not careful, that the Secret Service will come and take you away because if you're engraving certain things, isn't that illegal? If you're going to take up wedding plan and you're going to do engraved invitations, I think that would be wonderful. But if you're thinking about money, I'm going to ask you maybe to slow your roll there a little bit, because I don't know if I have enough money to break you out of that prison. Don't they just take you to the bottom of the Federal Reserve and leave you there? Is the worst prison because it goes down half a mile and there's no sunlight.
J. Aughenbaugh: There's no writ of habeas corpus for me.
N. Rodgers: I'd say it's done.
J. Aughenbaugh: But the other juxtaposition, listeners, is think about how hard up you would have to be if you hired me to do wedding planning for you.
N. Rodgers: I think you could be a lovely wedding planner. I've planned events with you, and you're very easygoing. Although, I don't know how you would deal with a bridezilla. I think you would have one of those meetings, and then her wedding would be all sad because she would have been set straight about what is acceptable and not acceptable in the bridal party.
J. Aughenbaugh: Go ahead, Nia.
N. Rodgers: Sorry. I was going to say, we talked about the office of the comptroller of the currency.
J. Aughenbaugh: Correct.
N. Rodgers: We didn't know we were doing a series inside a series until we got into the middle of it and we're like, there's more stuff here.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because then we did the mint.
J. Aughenbaugh: Mint.
N. Rodgers: Which makes coins.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: During the mint episode, we mentioned that they did not make the paper money for the United States.
J. Aughenbaugh: Correct.
N. Rodgers: The paper money is made by someone else.
J. Aughenbaugh: Correct. Yes.
N. Rodgers: That is the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Otherwise known as BEP.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or as I like to say it, BEP. I've been saying this, and I think Nia is getting tired of it, she's rolled her eyes at me. But the BEP is a government agency within, not surprisingly, the Department of the Treasury, and I love these economic terms, a variety of security products for the United States government.
N. Rodgers: I love it when you put that in your notes because I was like, security products? What does that mean? Then I was realizing, because the money has security tapes inside of it, it's created on certain paper, on certain engravings.
J. Aughenbaugh: You mean in certain ink?
N. Rodgers: Under the theory that you won't be able to reproduce it, although, we know that people try on a fairly regular basis. Aren't $20 bills the most commonly forged?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. What Nia is pointing out to listeners, is if you are going to engage in forgery, those who engage in it are known as master forgers or paper hangers.
N. Rodgers: Paper hangers. Counterfeiters.
J. Aughenbaugh: Counterfeiters. Because in the past, what they would do is [OVERLAPPING]
N. Rodgers: Hang it up to dry.
J. Aughenbaugh: Hang it up to dry.
N. Rodgers: Paper hangers.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now today, they use all technology to where the ink is drying almost as the currency is being made. But in the past, the dilemma is it would be more cost efficient if you made, for instance, $100 bills. But $100 bills are so rare that people are more likely to look at them closely.
N. Rodgers: They're more suspicious. Whereas, ATMs produce 20s. That's how you get money out of an ATM. Which means it's a super common currency.
J. Aughenbaugh: When they were first engaging in counterfeiting of currency, it wouldn't make very much sense. It would not be cost efficient to go ahead and make a whole bunch of ones and fives. Because you're not getting a really good return.
N. Rodgers: Pages of one. Although, if you gave your kids those for their allowances, they'd save you a lot of money, probably. Until you get caught.
J. Aughenbaugh: But there's the logic.
N. Rodgers: You have to find the sweet spot of how much investment you're making versus whether you're going to get caught or not. Probably,20s are the sweet spot for that.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: How long have we had money? No, I don't mean that facetiously. We've had some form of paper currency.
J. Aughenbaugh: Back to the colonial era, yes.
N. Rodgers: Well, and prior to that in England.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Paper money is not this all new fangledy thing that the colonies came up with.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, it's not.
N. Rodgers: Coins were in the Roman Empire. You had coins, you didn't have paper. But then once you start getting the British Empire, you start having paper?
J. Aughenbaugh: Because mercantilism, which is a step up from feudalism, mercantilism required some currency.
N. Rodgers: They all agreed with a certain amount.
J. Aughenbaugh: So that you could go ahead and do an exchange, pay for a good or service. Instead of paying for a good or service in regards to crops that you grew or other items that you may have grown on a farm, now you're actually talking about you need currency that would denote a value. Nia, if you go ahead and as a wedding planner, make some really nice wedding invitations, how do you get paid for that? I'm not going to go ahead and pay for that by giving you a bushel of squash.
N. Rodgers: I think it was China. The first cash money comes in from China the 12th century or 11th century. Something like that where somebody was like, I don't want to carry coins all the way across China. Think about how big China is and how heavy coins are. You get people who are like, no, we need something that's lighter and easier to manage, so you get paper currency.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, what was fascinating, and listeners, please forgive me for repeating something that I've said a number of times in this series, is that when I'm doing this research, I always find something that I did not know previously. With the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, I did not know that they made more than just currency. They also make, this just blew me away, treasury securities. You're talking about government, treasury bills.
N. Rodgers: Physical.
J. Aughenbaugh: Federal government bonds.
N. Rodgers: You get a paper representation of that when you do.
J. Aughenbaugh: They make those. Military commissions and award certificates.
N. Rodgers: General Bob, here's your commission for generalist and it's written on it.
J. Aughenbaugh: I just thought the Department of Defense did this. No, this is completely centralized.
N. Rodgers: I would source it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Invitations and admissions cards for government buildings.
N. Rodgers: Invitations like you've been invited to the state dinner at the White House.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: These are the people who print.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. They do ID cards for government buildings, forms, because there are still forms because some people don't use the Internet. Other special security documents for a variety of government agencies.
N. Rodgers: One thing they don't do is passports. That's the government printing office.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because we have to decentralize some stuff because otherwise, the government would be too organized.
N. Rodgers: You can't have that. I do think it's interesting when they give you that Medal of Honor at the White House when they give you the Congressional Medal of Honor or whatever, the medal itself is printed by the Mint.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The paper acknowledgment of it printed by the engraving and printing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. The thing that you will put into a frame is made by completely different government office.
N. Rodgers: That's cool, though.
J. Aughenbaugh: It is cool.
N. Rodgers: It takes some coordination, I would imagine. If you were going to give someone one of those honors, you would need to get with a bunch of different people and coordinate that you had all the bids. Because you're not going to hand somebody an empty, like folder with insert printed thing here once we get it.
J. Aughenbaugh: But it also ensures quality. You know, it's going to be a quality document because the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, BEP, has been in existence since July of 1861.
N. Rodgers: Oh, Civil War.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Civil War.
N. Rodgers: Civil War gets us a lot of stuff. Lots of reorganization of government happens.
J. Aughenbaugh: During this period of time.
N. Rodgers: That's when we get the Library of Congress, that's when we get, sorry, the Federal Depository Library program.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Because the library of Congress existed way back.
N. Rodgers: But you get the FDLP which is libraries around the nation. You get all kinds of cool stuff. Obviously, you also get lots of death and mayhem and sadness. Not suggesting that we should hold a civil war to get cool stuff. Not I meant.
J. Aughenbaugh: Even improvements in battlefield medical care arose during the Civil War.
N. Rodgers: You start to get anesthesia. You start to get all kinds of stuff, yeah.
J. Aughenbaugh: The Civil War ushered in the United States shifting from farming to industrialization. The Civil War is a pivotal period of time beyond the war itself.
N. Rodgers: Then post war, you get theoretically the emancipation, although you also get Jim Crow.
J. Aughenbaugh: Etc. Now, the reason why Congress created it was to go ahead and issue paper currency in lieu of coins due to the lack of funds needed to support union war effort. The currency became like a promissory note. The government was giving you, if you will, currency.
N. Rodgers: You'll just hang on after the it'd be worth something.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Okay.
N. Rodgers: An IOU.
J. Aughenbaugh: The BEP first created in Washington, DC, there is now a second facility in Fort Worth, Texas. But you are correct, Nia. Those first, if you will, dollars that were printed by BEP, were an IOU. They were called demand notes because they were payable on demand in coin at treasury facilities after the war.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. You bring us these dollars. We'll give you back coins. Because people still really liked coins. It's only in the modern era that you see people disliking Coins. Because it was tangible money. A coin is a tangible thing.
J. Aughenbaugh: It has weight.
N. Rodgers: That you can hold in your pocket it jingles. It makes. We like coins. That's why we don't want the mint to go under because we like coins.
J. Aughenbaugh: But what's really interesting is one year later, with the second Legal Tender Act, Congress authorized the Treasury Secretary to engrave and print notes at the Treasury Department, and this is where you get specific fine line engraving, intricate geometrical, lathed work patterns, the treasury seal engraves signatures, all designed to make it more difficult. To counterfeit. Because they quickly found out that.
N. Rodgers: People will literally make money.
J. Aughenbaugh: They will make money.
N. Rodgers: Because criminals are both dumb and not dumb. They're dumb because a lot of them don't get away with it, but they're not dumb because they see the gap. Between the thing that you have done and the security measures you have not yet taken.
J. Aughenbaugh: In so many ways, when I was reading why the Congress authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to do this, it reminds me of my students who are smart enough to try to go ahead and figure out how to cheat. But they're dumb enough to where they don't do it well. They look for the gaps, as you just mentioned. I really don't want to go ahead and read 15-20 sources. Is there a way for me to go ahead and figure out how to do this? Well, after they spend all that time and energy trying to figure out how they can go ahead and not do the work, they've done a whole bunch of work. But in the process, they point out the gaps, the flaws.
N. Rodgers: For you so that you can tighten them up in next semester.
J. Aughenbaugh: In many ways, my college students are so similar to these counterfeiters that Congress was trying to thwart. I'm like this is good. This is a good example for me to use in the future, when I'm telling my students, don't do this. You're smart enough to go ahead and see the gaps, but perhaps not smart enough to go ahead and pull off.
N. Rodgers: See the way you'll get caught.
J. Aughenbaugh: But nevertheless. That's where we get. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing. Part of their purpose and mission was to go ahead and produce, these securities for the US federal government. Now, initially, when Congress created the office of the Comptroller of the Currency, in the National Currency Bureau in 1863. This is the first home, if you will, of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
N. Rodgers: It wasn't called that?
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: Because we don't ever keep the name we start with.
J. Aughenbaugh: No, it was long winded title, designated the "First division National Currency Bureau."
N. Rodgers: Nobody was going to call it that. Well, it doesn't sound like anything. It is so much better when you name a thing, the thing that it is. Well, in all when you call the Department of Treasury, that's probably about money. But Department of Agriculture. It's probably about agriculture, but when you start naming things, these obscure weird names that people are like, I don't even know what that is or what it would do.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, when you do eventually in the future, become important government officials.
N. Rodgers: Work for me while I'm president.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, there is that, too. But when you're giving a title to a bureaucratic agency, never have a title with a comma in it.
N. Rodgers: Because people won't read pass the comma.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, it doesn't flow because comma denotes that you're supposed to pause. Nobody's going to pause when you're given the title. Nobody goes ahead and says.
N. Rodgers: Nobody pauses dramatically. First division, national currency.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. It doesn't flow. It doesn't capture what it actually does.
N. Rodgers: Although I'm not sure that the other titles did either.
J. Aughenbaugh: But what Nia is referencing is the fact that throughout the history of the BEP, it was also known as the Printing Bureau, the small Note Bureau, the currency department, and my favorite the small note room. I don't know what was going on there.
N. Rodgers: But I think that's awesome. Think of it is a room full of posted notes. It's a small note room.
J. Aughenbaugh: Not the full size posted notes.
N. Rodgers: No, like the little baby. Do they have ones that you can get like three words on?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, that never have enough space, for those of us who perhaps write with normal, if you will, letters.
N. Rodgers: Handwriting, that's right. John Hancock certainly couldn't have used it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, my goodness, no. You would need at least tens [inaudible]. But from the beginning, the BEP designed and printed a variety of products.
N. Rodgers: In 1874, it becomes the Bureau of engraving and printing. Then it gets money the next year. What I think is hilarious is up until that time, they weren't funding it.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: Here's the thing. I don't know how you're going to pay for it, but here's the thing Treasury. The Treasury is like, if you want us to do this, you probably should fund it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, what is also fascinating to me is the Bureau of Engraving and Printing at its onset, actually did print stuff that now other government agencies print. For instance, the BEP used to make passports.
J. Aughenbaugh: But now, as Nia points out, passports are made by?
N. Rodgers: Government pinting office.
J. Aughenbaugh: Government printing office.
N. Rodgers: For the State Department.
J. Aughenbaugh: For the State Department. That's right.
N. Rodgers: The government printing office doesn't issue it to you.
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: The State Department says to the government printing office, hey, I need a passport in the name of John Aughenbaugh that give you all the particulars. They give you the picture, you go print it and you hand it to the State Department who then hands it to John Aughenbaugh, but there's a whole system in which it goes through these checks and balances to make sure that it's the thing that it says it is.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then they also did money orders for the post office.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. You can still get money orders at the post office, can't you?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, you can.
N. Rodgers: Up to a certain amount of money. I don't think you can get them more than, is it $500?
J. Aughenbaugh: I don't know the exact amount.
N. Rodgers: There's some limits.
J. Aughenbaugh: But you can still get them. Because I remember my grandmother used to send me to the bank and get money orders for her because she never liked to have a checking account because she didn't trust banks. God bless children of the Great Depression.
N. Rodgers: Of the Depression. That's right. Banks can take your money and close.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But they also printed things like interest bearing notes, stamps for the post office. This began in 1894. For almost a century, the BEP produced all the stamps for the post office until the post office went ahead and outsourced it.
N. Rodgers: I was going to say didn't they privatize stamp production?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, they did.
N. Rodgers: Really it says a lot about what we want quality wise.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That we want a centralized place with a lot of quality checks to be the ones to print certain things because you don't want them to look funky. I don't know if you've noticed, but in modern era stamps, sometimes they're blurry. Sometimes they're blurry looking.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Because the printing gets off.
J. Aughenbaugh: I've seen that, for instance, with the holiday stamps, right?
N. Rodgers: Yes, specialty stamps.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, the specialty stamps, but I see this a lot with holiday stamps. I will buy particular holiday stamps for my Christmas cards, but sometimes
N. Rodgers: They're little blurry, like they did slide print [inaudible] .
J. Aughenbaugh: The production role. That's pretty fascinating because the BEP continued to make stamps for the Postal Service until 2005. Then within six years, the Postal Service took back the printing of postage stamps and now are doing it in house. Only for six years was it privatized.
N. Rodgers: So the problem with quality is the US Postal Service. We should give it back. When I'm president, we'll give it back to engraving. We will give it back to the BEP.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, one of your first executive orders.
N. Rodgers: Heck yeah. My executive orders are not going to be nearly as.
J. Aughenbaugh: Controversial of recent. Yes.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. Mine are gonna be all these plan, stamps will go back to being printed by the BEP.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, with one exception. Nia, listeners, at the request of her trusted advisor will make every single day National Coffee Day, simply because of me. We can get into executive orders as a follow up to the fine work that our colleague Bill Newman did in a previous episode Down with Broccoli.
N. Rodgers: We should bring him back and say, how's that executive order thing working out this days, and just watch his face slightly melt. He will have lots of feelings. We should invite him back to do that. Maybe we'll do that in the fall, see if we can get on his schedule.
J. Aughenbaugh: In addition to postal stamps, the big one is currency production. I did not know this, Nia. In 1929, there was a redesign of our currency, which was the first change in almost, what, 70 years. The note design was not only standardized, but the note size was also significantly reduced.
N. Rodgers: Yeah, they used to be really big. Money used to be quite large.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. That's the reason why if you see photos of people of the late 1800s to early 1900s, they had these big wallets and purses. In part, it was because to be able to go ahead and house the currency.
N. Rodgers: My question is, does Levi jeans with their small pockets bring in small wallets which bring in small money?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, yeah.
N. Rodgers: How does that all interplay because those big wallets were not going into Levi jeans? By the way, Levi Strauss was the person who first came up with jeans and getting the pockets on the back that men put their wallets in.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Then sit on and squish.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, which causes hip problems. No, I'm sorry. That only occurs when you get older. For our younger male listeners, know this, you have this to look forward to.
N. Rodgers: I don't know if the men still put wallets in their back pockets.
J. Aughenbaugh: I don't know if they do that. I guess maybe men of our generation.
N. Rodgers: Guys who are carrying their phones now, and they're carrying them in their front pockets. That's a whole different.
J. Aughenbaugh: It is. But I wonder if there is that causal connection.
N. Rodgers: Right. Which of these steps follow each other in terms of we should do some deep dive on that at some point?
J. Aughenbaugh: But the redesign effort came for several reasons. Chief among them a reduction in paper cost, again, here's the theme, for this episode, improved counterfeit deterrence. Because again, if you had regular features, then not only customers, but if you will, proprietors of businesses will knock and say this is [inaudible] .
N. Rodgers: Glance at it and say that seems a little sketchy.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Also if you're fitting more bills onto a sheet of money, you're reducing the cost of printing money because if the sheets can accommodate more dollars or more $5 or more $10 notes because they're smaller, then it's a cost savings. It's very DoGE, but back in the day.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, there you go.
N. Rodgers: Saving money on the number of sheets that you would have to print.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then the next improvement, Nia occurred in 1952 in regards to the production of non offset inks.
N. Rodgers: Specialty inks.
J. Aughenbaugh: These are inks that dry faster. You no longer had to place tissues between the sheets to prevent the ink from offsetting to other sheets.
N. Rodgers: Then you save money doing that?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, that's right.
N. Rodgers: I didn't know that they had to put tissue between the sheets.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. But again, that explains the old, if you will, descriptor of counterfeiters as paper hangers. Because if you're engaged in counterfeiting, are you going to go out and want to increase your cost by buying a whole bunch of tissue paper to place in between your counterfeit sheets of dollars? Probably not.
N. Rodgers: I wouldn't.
J. Aughenbaugh: Right. Again, 1952 was a big gear because not only with the ink, then you also got new printing where you could go ahead and create plates that could print 18 notes per plate. Again, this cuts down on costs.
N. Rodgers: Number of sheets again. Don't they get at some point a special funky ink that is really hard to reproduce?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That's in the '50s, too, isn't it?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, it is.
N. Rodgers: They bring in some special funky ink that's a lot harder. It's something like it's green, but it's not really green. It's weird.
J. Aughenbaugh: I've seen multiple descriptions of what the actual color is.
N. Rodgers: Now, good luck with that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, one actually did use the adjective funky like you just did, which just made me chuckle. I almost put it in my prep notes because I figured you'd be like, uh-huh. But no, to that point, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing has spent a lot of time and energy researching ways to make it more difficult to counterfeit the American currency because it's not just Americans and American businesses. It's the fact that the American "dollar" is currency around the world.
N. Rodgers: Every country will take your dollar. If you travel at all, and you don't get the local currency, if you pay in dollars, they will almost always take your dollars. They will usually, by the way, give you your change in local currency.
J. Aughenbaugh: Currency, which stinks, but nevertheless, it is a universal payment option.
N. Rodgers: Part of that has to do with petroleum being purchased in dollars.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: There is a movement afoot in some of the BRICS countries to say, we don't want to take your dollars anymore. Thus far, the United States has avoided that being the case, but if it did ever come about, I suspect there would be big shifts in how governments work. That would be a huge shift. But how much do they cost?
J. Aughenbaugh: Ten cents per note.
N. Rodgers: Ten cents for $1, but also 10 cents for a $5, 10 cents for a $20. It's actually cheaper for the American government to print $20 bills than it is for them to print.
J. Aughenbaugh: Larger denominations.
N. Rodgers: We're getting into the coin question of, should we have dollars?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Should we have $5? Because if it costs the same to print $20, why don't we just, I didn't realize there was a thing?
J. Aughenbaugh: During various congressional hearings, Nia, members of Congress have asked, would it not be cheaper for the United States government to get rid of either the $1 bill, and whose face is on that?
N. Rodgers: Washington.
J. Aughenbaugh: Or the $5 bill. Whose face is on that?
N. Rodgers: I don't know. Is that Lincoln?
J. Aughenbaugh: It is Lincoln. Who's on the 10? I'll give you a hint.
N. Rodgers: Hamilton.
J. Aughenbaugh: Very good.
N. Rodgers: Who's on the 20?
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, now you've stumped me.
N. Rodgers: I don't know.
J. Aughenbaugh: Who's on the $20 bill? Nia's furiously looking that up. Well, she is.
N. Rodgers: Andrew Jackson.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Andrew Jackson is on the $20 bill.
J. Aughenbaugh: One of the greatest ironies, Andrew Jackson's face actually being on one of our currencies because he hated the bank, he hated any kind of mercantilism. He was a huge proponent of agrarian economy. One of the great ironies is Andrew Jackson's $20 bill.
N. Rodgers: Is it Andrew Jackson who had the big block of cheese?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, he was the big block of cheese president.
N. Rodgers: Big block of cheese, President.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Come and talk to us about what's going on in the world.
J. Aughenbaugh: While you're here, you can go ahead [inaudible] .
N. Rodgers: You can have some cheese.
J. Aughenbaugh: Have some cheese. By the way, listeners, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing does not release a whole bunch of information about how many currency notes [inaudible].
N. Rodgers: Dollars are in circulation. It is so much easier to counterfeit paper money than it is to counterfeit coins. That they are much less likely to tell you how much currency is in circulation at any time, rather than coins. They're happy to tell you how many coins they mint because good luck minting coins. That's a complex thing entirely, whereas currency is a little easier to, and it is, in fact, illegal to print money. If you think, oh, I'm going to print money for a party and I'm going to just print off a few $1 or I'm going to copy $1 bill, that is totally illegal. You should not be copying money at all.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Again, they don't want counterfeiters to know how much currency is in circulation because then that can go ahead and create, if you will, production targets for counterfeiters. Again, this is a theme that's running through this episode is the extent to which the United States government tries to make it extremely difficult for it to be a value for counterfeiters.
N. Rodgers: The security strips that are inside of them and the fine detail, that's in the engraving, all of that is geared towards trying to prevent counterfeiting. It doesn't always work?
J. Aughenbaugh: No.
N. Rodgers: There are some talented counterfeiters out there that have managed to make it work for themselves.
J. Aughenbaugh: Listeners, just a few more points here about the Bureau of Engraving and Printing because as you can tell, Nia and I are just fascinated by this, and we are, and we could probably go on for hours. But there are two locations: One, I mentioned the District of Columbia location, and the current BEP was constructed in 1914. There was an addition that was built during the Great Depression in May of 1938.
N. Rodgers: It's funny you'd think that there wouldn't be enough money to warrant doing that, although it was probably a WPA project to put people to work.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, think about, too. The United States Supreme Court building was not finished until 1935.
N. Rodgers: The mall just did not look like it does now.
J. Aughenbaugh: [inaudible] it does now.
N. Rodgers: Where's the building?
J. Aughenbaugh: It's on 14th and 15th Streets.
N. Rodgers: Oh, by the tidal basin.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, and it's got a neoclassical look to it.
N. Rodgers: Don't most of the buildings have that big columns?
J. Aughenbaugh: If you've been in DC.
N. Rodgers: Scary Roman architecture, trying to intimidate visitors.
J. Aughenbaugh: Chances are, listeners, if you've ever visited Washington, DC, chances are you've passed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing because it's located between 14th and 15th Street. You probably gotten lost in DC and you've walked right by the building. But you're like, oh, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, I don't know what they do there. They're printers. Who cares about printers? Well, you should care because they probably printed your currency. Well, they did mainly until they went ahead and built a new location in Fort Worth, Texas in 1987. They did this basically to have a western southern location, basically to transport currency to federal reserve banks in San Francisco, Dallas, and Kansas City. They thought it would be cheaper.
N. Rodgers: Probably safer. The smaller distances to take currency to those institutions.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because, again, it's not just criminals who want to counterfeit. You're talking about criminals who would love to be able to go ahead and get a shipment of newly printed legal tender.
N. Rodgers: Of legal tender because the numbers would be legit. The serial numbers on them would be legit, that kind of stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: The paper, the codes, etc.
N. Rodgers: Aughie, we should go on a tour sometime and then come back and tell people. We should go on a field trip. We should take a field trip to DC.
J. Aughenbaugh: Hey, and maybe we could take some of my students from my bureaucratic politics class.
N. Rodgers: Yeah.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Behold the bureaucracy.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, this is an important function in regards to the nation's economy. You can't shift from Agrarian to industrialization without a secure currency. You just can't.
N. Rodgers: You can't have a country without secure currency. If your currency can be easily counterfeited.
J. Aughenbaugh: Counterfeited or manipulated?
N. Rodgers: Your toast as a country. One of the things that you have to do as a developing nation is figure out how to secure your currency.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because again, and we've talked about this in previous podcast episodes, so much about a nation's economy is about confidence. Confidence in banks, confidence in currency, confidence that a government policy is going to produce the results that elected officials say it's going to produce. If you're not confident, you're not going to spend money. If you don't spend money, then-
N. Rodgers: The stock market tanks, the interest rates go bonkers. You get runs on banks, and you get drama.
J. Aughenbaugh: Then, companies stop producing goods. When they start producing goods, they no longer need as many workers.
N. Rodgers: They're going to lay these people off, and those people don't have any money to spend. The early circular note of you not having any money and then you get the Zimbabwean dollar, which is actually printed up to be a $100 million note or something. Or you get post-World War I, Germany, where you have the Weimar Republic with currency that's worth absolutely nothing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nothing where you get situations.
N. Rodgers: Then pretty soon people cast around and say, there's got to be an enemy we have to deal with to fight, and then you get another war because that's how that works.
J. Aughenbaugh: You end up in a place where a roll of toilet paper costs 500 bucks.
N. Rodgers: Because $500 is meaningless.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. But interesting to note, the United States Congress has given permission for the Department of the Treasury to move the BEP from Washington DC to where Nia?
N. Rodgers: Beltsville, Maryland.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Beltsville, which I assume means that it's on the Beltway. It's on the Maryland part. It's got to be why it's got the name Beltsville. Into the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center, otherwise known as BARC. Because the government does love a fun acronym.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, it does. This was announced in April of 2022.
N. Rodgers: Will it still be true?
J. Aughenbaugh: We don't know.
N. Rodgers: Because that was during the Joe Biden free love era. The current Trump administration here is Joe Biden's name attached to anything.
J. Aughenbaugh: It's bad.
N. Rodgers: Can't allow that. I'm not entirely certain. Isn't Governor Larry Hogan a Democrat in Maryland?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, no, Larry Hogan was a Republican. He's been replaced by a Democrat.
N. Rodgers: That's what it is. Sorry, he's a Republican. Maybe it will happen, but maybe it will not.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, this was a deal between the Biden administration and Larry Hogan's gubernatorial administration. Larry Hogan is one of the few Republicans who's actually spoken against Trump. If there's a project that's-
N. Rodgers: That his name is on.
J. Aughenbaugh: Is going to be targeted by Doge, it would not surprise me if somewhere in the laundry list of emails and press announcements from Doge that the transfer of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to Maryland has now been squelched. If it does go forward, it's supposed to be completed by 2027. Though interestingly enough, Congress's Government Accountability Office has been very skeptical about cost overruns for constructing the facility.
N. Rodgers: I think one of the GAO's problems is one of the problems and one of the criticisms that I have of it, which is, I'm not sure how necessary it was. It was doing fine where it was. Now, I get that DC real estate is worth a lot of money, but they already owned the building. Part of what I think they were saying was that they needed a bigger building. But do people even use? You and I do, because Gen X is cynical and old, and we don't trust cards. We still use cash. Our parents use cash because they're boomers and they're greatest generation, and they're fearful of cards. If you've said to Mac, would you like cash? Would she look at you like you were bonkers?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, she would. She has told me that she would actually prefer her own debit card that I replenish on a monthly basis.
N. Rodgers: Nice. I'd like one of those, too, if you're giving them out, Aughie, just in case you were wondering or if you're going to replenish it every month.
J. Aughenbaugh: All of a sudden, I have a whole bunch of new friends.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. But there is an interesting thing where people use now wallet pay, and they use all kinds of things that are not cash.
J. Aughenbaugh: They're cashless.
N. Rodgers: Do they really need to be printing as much cash as they're printing? I don't know. It's an interesting question.
J. Aughenbaugh: That is one of the questions that has been posed by various members of Congress to the Treasury Department.
N. Rodgers: Before we get there, can I mention the BEP has its own police force, just like the Mint has its own police force.
J. Aughenbaugh: Again, something I did not know existed.
N. Rodgers: I didn't know it either until you put it in your notes, and I was like, wow. You can be a police officer for a federal agency, and in a bunch of different agencies they have their own police force.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes
N. Rodgers: I assume investigate their own internal crimes and all stuff like that.
J. Aughenbaugh: The primary function of the BEP Police Department is to protect BEP personnel and facilities. These are important people. You don't want somebody who's a chief engraver for BEP to be kidnapped.
N. Rodgers: Snatched off the street because now they're going to be forced to do it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Counterfeiting work.
N. Rodgers: Exactly.
J. Aughenbaugh: But they're responsible for enforcing federal and local laws, treasury rules, REGs, and they even have a memorandum of understanding between Washington DC and the state of Texas to enforce those local government laws in regards to counterfeiting. Wait a minute. At one point, they had 234 police officers. The force has been reduced somewhat to 187.
N. Rodgers: That's 187 cops.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's 187 cops. Yes.
N. Rodgers: That works for them.
J. Aughenbaugh: Just for them. Yes.
N. Rodgers: Probably no counterfeiting laws so well.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, yes.
N. Rodgers: Between them and the Secret Service, who also work on counterfeiting laws or work under counterfeiting jurisdiction, that's what they have. That's part of their job. If you get arrested by one of these guys, it's because you're a counterfeiter. There's not going to be any, oh, I didn't do that, officer. Sure, you did. We can tell you did it and now it's just a matter of enforcing the law.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because they're the experts.
N. Rodgers: You're the guys who can look at a note and go, that's a counterfeit. Or as you and I in a business or in a bank would be like, oh, it looks good to me. Although now they have those pens that they're supposed to take and put across your 20 or your 50 or your $100 bill or whatever, and make sure that it's legit. Because it turns a certain color, and I've never been clear on whether that is actually a thing or not, but the people at the grocery store do it, so they clearly believe that it's a thing, that it's detectable, I should say.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, the last thing we're going to discuss listeners, and we've done this with all of our bureaus and agencies in this series, we're going to discuss a few criticisms because, these are large bureaucratic organizations. Most of them have your standard pathologies. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing is definitely representative of that. The BEPs had some internal HR human resource issues, lack of consideration of their needs, issues with regulations, vacancy postings, workload distribution. I found this on a number of websites.
N. Rodgers: I want to hear you say it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Reports of promotions based on kissing up rather than merit.
N. Rodgers: Kissing up. Not a phrase that you use all that often.
J. Aughenbaugh: No. Well, I certainly don't use.
N. Rodgers: It's extraordinarily unfortunate that it's kissing up rather than merit.
N. Rodgers: It means that some people aren't getting promoted in the proper time with the proper effort without being rewarded. What's being rewarded is brown-nosing. Nobody likes that.
J. Aughenbaugh: Not surprisingly, with an agency that's existed for 180 years, it has been criticized for stifling change or being resistant to change.
N. Rodgers: Yeah. That's not how we do it here. In some ways, the BEP is very Southern.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Because Southerners tend to be like, but that's not how my great great grandfather did it.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They look at you like they don't understand why you would want to change something.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Think about how much more efficient it could be if we did it X way, and they still look at you like, but that's not how we do it.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Again, as somebody who studies public administration in the bureaucracy, this is a lament that you could pretty much go ahead and pass that any number.
N. Rodgers: To a lot of the older agencies.
J. Aughenbaugh: A lot of the older agencies. Because they've been doing it a certain way, they believe that there's a certain amount of trust in the way they've done it.
N. Rodgers: Why change if it works? If it ain't broken, don't fix it.
J. Aughenbaugh: On the other hand, things are always changing.
N. Rodgers: New people to the agency are like, but think about how much more efficient it would be or how much more transparent it would be if we did it X way.
J. Aughenbaugh: There are many critics who believe the Bureau of Engraving and Printing because it is a government agency should be more transparent with regards to its decision making process. Of course, BEP has argued for years, more transparency with our primary function, which is printing currency.
N. Rodgers: Means more counterfeiting. I'm not sure I disagree with them on that. If they tell you how they're making money more safe, it won't be more safe.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is one of those tensions that you see in democratic government. On one hand, the public has a right to know, because the government works for the public. On the other hand, some of the things that the government does, if it's going to be done well, has to be done secretly.
N. Rodgers: Has to be done secretly. One of the best boons for people who are anti death penalty was when the government started telling you which pharmacies were making the drugs to put people to death because then people were like, good, we can put those pharmacies out of business which will do an end run on the government being able to engage in the death penalty. Because if they can't get the drugs, they can't put people to death using those drugs.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. That's part of the three drug lethal injection concept.
N. Rodgers: What states who were doing that wanted to do, they were saying, but you're preventing us from doing the thing we want to do. The advocates were saying, yes, we are. There's some real tension there of how that should work.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's a really good example, Nia.
N. Rodgers: If the government says, hey, we're using this color ink, counterfeiters are like, thank you very much, which the government wants to avoid. Because partly it devalues the money when there's extra money in the system. Because part of what they're trying to do with controlling the amount of currency is controlling the value of the currency.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: If all of a sudden there's 8,000 billion more 20s than they were expecting, then it's worth less value rather. There's a real tension there.
J. Aughenbaugh: Now, the other criticism and we're going to end on this is one, Nia, you mentioned a few minutes ago, and that is members of Congress have called for shrinking BEPs production capacity. Why? Because there are an increasing number of Americans who don't use cash, and there's a growing number of businesses that no longer use currency as payment forms. We see this because we live in a somewhat large city like Richmond. There are businesses who are like, we don't accept cash.
N. Rodgers: Because it saves them not having to do the bank run every day.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: Because they don't want to get robbed. If they hold that cash more than a day or two in their business, they'll get robbed so they have to make the bank run, which means they have to have accounts that accept cash in weird denominations. Somebody has to count all that. Somebody has to take it to the bank and do the deposit. There's a lot of steps involved in that that a small business may not be interested in engaging in. They may not be interested in dealing with all that. Especially if you're talking about small art businesses. Can you imagine, let's say that I don't know, you and I make earrings because I love earrings. You and I make earrings, and we sell in cash, then you and I have to have a mechanism to deal with all that cash.
J. Aughenbaugh: Correct.
N. Rodgers: Whereas if we say we only take Venmo, then it's all electronic.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right.
N. Rodgers: It's easier to be tracked by software that tracks that and make sure that we're paying our taxes and doing all our stuff. I can see why a business might want to not engage with cash.
J. Aughenbaugh: But once again, learnt some brand new stuff, which is cool.
N. Rodgers: It would make me sad to lose cash.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, it would.
N. Rodgers: There are some things I wouldn't buy if I had to pay cash for them. I'd be like, maybe I'll rethink this purchase. You know what I mean? Maybe I'll be like, do I really want to spend? I'm not going to impulse spend that the way I would if I pulled out a credit card. [inaudible] spend on credit card because credit cards don't feel as painful.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because I'm less likely to do an impulse purchase if I have to go and run to the bank and take out a couple hundred bucks to go ahead and make the purchase, because I'll be thinking as I drive to my bank, do I really want to spend?
N. Rodgers: Do I really want to spend this $200 on this thing? Whereas, if I can pull out my credit card, this is painless. Because it doesn't feel like I'm actually paying for it because in some ways, I'm not until later.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, until later, when I'm like, what was I thinking, but I've already made the purchase.
N. Rodgers: Now it's there, but now it's done.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, I can see your point there. Listeners, thanks. We hope you enjoyed.
N. Rodgers: Thanks for sticking with us on this little mini series. We are not sure in the Fall whether we're going to go revisit more agencies. There's a lot more cool agencies to talk about that we have not gotten to. But we're also looking towards the gubernatorial race that's happening in Virginia and not just Virginia, but there'll be other races that there'll be some really interesting election stuff that's going to come up and how that is going to affect the Trump administration and how the Trump administration is going to affect those local elections. But also, we have not forgotten that we have not finished the federalist papers. We have not gotten to a lot of other founding documents that are interesting. We don't know where we're going to be in the Fall, but we hope you'll be here with us. Don't forget that the Summer of SCOTUS is coming up in which we talk about some of the more interesting things that have happened this year in terms of decisions, but also in terms of some of the tumult that the Supremes have undergone this year and some of the cracks that they've shown us in their once united facade. Looking forward to that, too.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, of course, listeners, we always have a healthy agenda because there's always government documents, government agencies.
N. Rodgers: Always something going on with the government.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. We appreciate you all continuing to listen to us and follow us on our insatiable curiosity about discussing and learning about the government and all of its shapes. Thanks, Nia.
N. Rodgers: Thank you, Aughie.
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