All of us who live in the United States, have spent all our lives looking at the same style of paper currency: those things that say “Federal Reserve Note” and have a dead President in the center of the bill in an oval frame. Every now and then the Bureau of Engraving and Printing starts distributing a new design of U.S. currency, we’ve started seeing some variations in the theme; certainly we get to see the details of the portrait engravers’ work much more clearly. Still, though, we rarely stop to appreciate the skill and artistry of the engravers… after all, it’s just money. We just take it out and spend it.

But what if the Bureau of Engraving and Printing decided, as they did in the 1890s, to use our paper money as a showcase for art?

Silver certificates are an older form of U.S. currency; their value was backed by silver held in the U.S. Treasury, and they could be redeemed at the Treasury for silver dollars. An 1886 Act of Congress authorized the creation of a new series of silver certificates, and so it came to pass that the Secretary of the Treasury gave the Bureau of Engraving and Printing the task of designing and printing the new currency.

Claude M. Johnson, then Chief of the BEP, had definite ideas about the role of art in paper money. By 1893 Johnson and the BEP had decided on four artists – the muralists Edwin H. Blashfield, Will H. Low, C. S. Reinhart and Walter Shirlaw – to design the new currency, and planned to award a commission of $800 for each design the BEP accepted.

1896 $1 USD Note

The noted artists, together with the BEP’s talented engravers, created a new currency of unparalleled beauty – extraordinary designs, the likes of which had never been seen before in the U.S. and have never been equalled since.

Will H. Low’s design for the $1 note

Will H. Low’s design for the $1 note, entitled History Instructing Youth, shows a female History with a young student standing beside her, gesturing to an open book of history before her. An olive branch rests against the book, holding it open to show the Constitution of the United States upon the page. Both the Washington Memorial and the Capitol Dome can be seen in the background landscape. The outside border of the note shows 23 wreaths, each bearing the name of a noteworthy American – not surprisingly starting with Washington, Jefferson and Franklin, but also including such names as poet Henry Longfellow, inventor Robert Fulton, and author Nathaniel Hawthorne, among many others. The seal of the Treasury appears in the lower right.

Low’s original painting, which now hangs in the BEP’s Washington, D.C. offices, was slowly and artfully reproduced as an intaglio printing plate by the BEP’s talented engraving staff.

Shortly after the $1 bill was released to the public, Bureau engraver G.F.C. Smillie was informed by a friend that the word tranquillity was misspelled in the tiny Constitution that adorned the book. “Rats,” Smillie reportedly replied. “The word was spelled that way in the original Constitution…”

Smillie was, of course, correct… even though, at the time, tranquillity (with two “l”s) was the accepted spelling.

“Now at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing we must ‘follow copy,’” a Bureau spokesman later stated, “and cannot demonstrate superior knowledge in the face of absolute authority. Hence, ‘tranquility’ is on the new note. There is plenty of authority for spelling that word economically in respect to ‘l’s.”

1896 $1 USD Currency Note

The $1 note was released to the public on July 14, 1896, the first of the series to be put into circulation. Because of the public’s unfamiliarity with the new money, though, some people began illegally “raising” the values of the bills by changing the numbers in the corners and then passing the notes off as “the new $5s” or “the new $10s”.

The memory of this may be why the present-day U.S. Treasury chose to release the highest denominations of our new currency first, and then slowly proceeded downwards as people grew accustomed to the new designs. (It would make little sense for a counterfeiter to take a new $100 bill and try to persuade people it was a new style of $1.)

The back of the 1896 $1, featuring intricate geometric lathe work and a winged, shield-bearing Liberty in each of the upper corners, carries traditionally-styled portraits of both George and Martha Washington. The portraits were engraved by Alfred Sealey and Charles Burt, respectively, and the overall design of the back was the work of Thomas F. Morris.

Recently made the Chief of the BEP’s engraving division, Morris had his own concerns about the 1896 note designs. They were the only notes since 1861 which had no geometric lathe designs on the face of the notes, and the intricate lathe-work served as a strong deterrent to counterfeiters. Perhaps this accounts for the unusually intricate and thorough lathe-work which Morris applied to the backs of the 1896 designs.

People being what they are, there were several public statements that the central “One” on the note was irresponsible. The reasoning was thus: “no one should come between George and Martha Washington”.

Don’t blame me. I don’t make the news. I only report it.

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Guardian in a recent report revealed the perpetrators of the global financial crisis. It  revealed their names and photos too. The British Guardian newspaper on Monday published a list of people whose work has proved fatal for the world economy. Lies have been told by  both policy makers and business sharks.

The publication also listed visionaries who, warned us long before the actual crisis hit our shores.  Unfortunately for the all us, these people were not involved in the process of decision-making.

In its famous “black list” Guardian has 25 spots. Almost half of them are filled with the people that have something to do with economic crisis of today. here are some of political and financial heavy weights.

Bark up the wrong tree “guru”

Alan Greenspan, head of the U.S. Federal Reserve( 1987 to 2006), is on the list at number one. The most influential financier has received from fans the world title of “guru”, “oracle” and “maestro”. In the delight of observers led his calmness with which Greenspan has held America through crises of 1987 and 1991, as well as the collapse of IT-industry in 2000 and panic in the markets that followed the September 11, 2001.  It was Greenspan in early 2000 pursued a policy of low rates of the Fed, which led to easy money and irresponsible distribution of loans by banks. Moreover, the head of the Fed encouraged mortgage borrowers to take loans with floating rates. When rates inevitably increased after the tightening of fiscal policy in the middle of this decade, the people proved to have nothing to pay sharply increased the cost of credit.

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We all have to consider the option of taking a loan at some point in our life. All of us make some purchases in life that are once in life time decisions for most of us. Good collage and school education, a nice auto-mobile, a decent place to live and call home. Most of these carry a price tag which is well beyond the reach of an average person who has just started his independent life. Unless your parents are filthy rich or you have just inherited a fortune, you can not buy any of above items by paying cash. A normal person simply does not have this kind of ready cash early in his life. To lead a decent life, you need good school and collage education, a good ride and a home. These needs are  immediate and we normally don’t have any choice but to seek loan from financial institutions and banks to fulfill those. We take school loans, collage loans, auto loans and seek home equity finance or mortgage to start our life.

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