Re: Even US has $1,000 bill — Doyin Okupe

SEPTEMBER 16, 2012 BY OUR READER 

Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe
| credits: pointblanknews.com

Sequel to the public outcry against the Federal Government’s proposed N5,000 bill, the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe, said  the United States of America also had higher denomination bills, but that Americans were not compelled to use them in daily transactions.

Okupe then told Nigerians in the same vein that when the new higher denomination currency goes into circulation, they could also decline to be paid when they go to banks to withdraw money.

Okupe has only spoken half-truth about the $1,000 bill, however, as the currency is far profitable as a memento, instead of as legal tender.

This is what Wikipedia, the online free reference, has to say about the $1,000 bill:

The base currency of the United States is the U.S. dollar, and is printed on bills in denominations of $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100. At one time, however, U.S. currency included five larger denominations.

Notes in the denominations of $500, $1,000, $5,000, $10,000 were printed for general use, and a $100,000 note was printed for certain internal transactions.

High-denomination currency was prevalent from the very beginning of U.S. Government issue (1861).

Interest-bearing notes of $500, $1,000, $5,000, and $10,000 were issued in 1861, and $5,000 and $10,000 United States Notes were released in 1878.

Although they are still technically legal tender in the United States, high-denomination bills were last printed in 1945 and officially discontinued on July 14, 1969 by the Federal Reserve System.

The $5,000 and $10,000 effectively disappeared well before then. Of the $10,000 bills, 100 were preserved for many years by Benny Binion, the owner of Binion’s Horseshoe casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, where they were displayed encased in acrylic.

The display has since been dismantled and the bills sold to private collectors. Also, there is one large-size, 1800s-era $1,000 bill in the Bird Cage Theatre in Tombstone, Arizona, underneath the glass counter top.

The Federal Reserve began taking high-denomination bills out of circulation in 1969. As of May 30, 2009, there were only 336 $10,000 bills known to exist; 342 remaining $5,000 bills; and 165,372 remaining $1,000 bills.

Due to their rarity, collectors will pay considerably more than the face value of the bills to acquire them. Some are even in other parts of the world in museums.

For the most part, these bills were used by banks and the Federal Government for large financial transactions.

However, the introduction of the electronic money system has made large-scale cash transactions obsolete. When combined with concerns about counterfeiting and the use of cash in unlawful activities such as the illegal drug trade, it is unlikely that the U.S. government will re-issue large denomination currency in the near future, despite the amount of inflation that has occurred since 1969.

According to the US Department of Treasury website, “The present denominations of our currency in production are $1, $2, $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100. Neither the Department of the Treasury nor the Federal Reserve System has any plans to change the denominations in use today.”

The $1,000 was printed as a small-size Federal Reserve Note in 1928 and 1934, and a small-size Gold Certificate in 1928 and 1934.

As of May 30, 2009, there were 165,372 $1,000 bills known to exist.

With this explanation, I urge the Nigerian Government to discontinue the N5,000 note project, if only to prove the opposition wrong that it’s meant to ease the burden of ferrying huge sums of money about during the 2015 elections!

Ganiyyu Ahmad,

g_ahmad1960@aol.com

SOURCE: The Punch - Nigeria's Most Widely Read Newspaper16 September 2012.