
Ask HN: Why don't Russia or China create counterfeit dollars? - ijafri
I am making an assumption that they as a Govt have all the technology and resources and what not to create counterfeit paper currency?
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PhilWright
I think you are underestimating the difficulty of actually making it work in
practice. Printing notes that are good enough to pass as the real thing is
going to be the easiest part of the problem. Say you have printed $10 billion
worth of notes. How the hell do you spend that as cash?

Send it to your embassy at the target country but then what? How many staff
would you need spending cash like crazy to get rid of it? You cannot spend it
on anything expensive because paying cash for a house or Ferrari will raise
flags. Especially if done often by a small number of the same people. You
could need to get the money into the banking system so you can aggregate it
together into a useful pile. But with banks on the look out for money
laundering that might be tricky.

Given the embarrassment to a country if caught it just does not seem worth the
effort and political risk. North Korea can try it because they can hardly be
punished more than the sanctions already do.

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jepler
it may be worth starting with
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfeit_United_States_curr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfeit_United_States_currency)
and more generally
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfeit_money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfeit_money)

Why would a state-level actor choose to counterfeit currency? "Nations have
used counterfeiting as a means of warfare. The idea is to overflow the enemy's
economy with fake bank notes, so that the real value of the money plummets.
Great Britain did this during the American Revolutionary War to reduce the
value of the Continental Dollar." On the other hand, this is probably not
worth doing unless you can counterfeit at least a few percent of all the money
in circulation...

Another reason that states would do it is if they are in a position like, say,
North Korea, with little access to the currencies they need to buy the items
they would like to buy from abroad due to international sanctions. "There have
been two primary reasons for [North Korea's alleged] counterfeiting: the first
is to wage economic warfare against the United States,[2] and secondly, to
help ease North Korea's domestic economic problems.[12]"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea%27s_illicit_activi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korea%27s_illicit_activities#Currency)

Well, thanks anyway for sending me down this k-hole of wikipedia articles
about forgery...

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CyberFonic
Don't know about those governments, but there are reports that criminal
networks are printing counterfeit paper currency and that they are widely
used. The huge black market demand for USD exists not only in Russia, but in
many South American countries. Whilst it doesn't hurt the money circulating in
USA, it increases the size of the black market in those countries and thus
hurts their fiscal position.

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informatimago
LOL! They couldn't print paper as fast as the Fed is creating currency
electronically! What do you think all those "Quantitative Easing" are?

paper currency is much less than one percent of the total currency dealt with
by banksters.

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Gustomaximus
They may do. The theory is North Korea but it could be China/Russia/Iran:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar)

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qwrusz
Love this post.

1\. Russia and China have no real need or use for counterfeit (or real) paper
US dollars. What the hell would they do with them? These countries have GDPs
in the trillions of dollars.

2\. It is illegal.

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philiphodgen
I wonder whether a hostile government could print enough $100 bills to damage
the currency? A single T-Bill auction would affect the money supply more than
printing presses running 24/7.

~~~
ijafri
Actually this wasn't a random thought, as I noticed Iran said they won't need
dollars but would keep pursuing missile tests, hmmm. Then I thought denying
$150 billion isn't as same as denying anything on earth.

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DrScump
What makes you think they (and others) don't?

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ijafri
Others do, I am talking on Govt level and such counterfeit currency according
to my assessment would be hard to detect, given the 'press and printing'
technology Govts especially Russians and Chinese may have.

Ok. If they already did or are doing it, then won't it hit US economy really
hard or even make the paper currency irrelevant to begin with?

~~~
DrScump
It's simpler than that. Given that the idiots running the Federal Reserve for
the past 10+ years have no plan to obsolete even the oldest notes, all an
enemy has to attack are the simplest notes (pre-modern anti-counterfeit
techniques).

~~~
jepler
It beats declaring bills in circulation obsolete with 24 hours notice, like
India did with the INR500 and INR1000 notes last fall. It's months later, and
you'll regularly encounter ATMs with no bills available; and retail
establishments which won't break the new INR500 and INR2000 notes which are
the ones you will get if you find a stocked ATM. (INR100 ~= USD1.50, or 5 1L
bottles of drinking water, or an entree at a decent restaurant that doesn't
cater to tourists)

source: I just returned from a vacation in India :)

Anyway, how do you think the US _should_ deal with old notes in circulation,
any suggestions or examples from other countries doing it in a sane way?
Perhaps the Euro currency transition could be a model?

~~~
JorgeGT
Here in the EU they seamlessly update bills. So far they've updated 5, 10, and
20€, with the 50€ following suit: [http://www.new-euro-
banknotes.eu/](http://www.new-euro-banknotes.eu/)

~~~
jepler
I see that "The €20 banknotes of the first series will remain legal tender and
continue to circulate alongside the new notes, but they will be gradually
withdrawn from circulation." [http://www.new-euro-banknotes.eu/News-
Events/PRESS-RELEASES-...](http://www.new-euro-banknotes.eu/News-Events/PRESS-
RELEASES-PRESS-KITS/NEW-%E2%82%AC20-BANKNOTE-STARTS-CIRCULATING-TODAY)

If I understand correctly, this is very much like the situation in the US,
where there is no specific date on which the old bills change from being
currency to being non-currency, which is what DrScump is getting at: "all an
enemy has to attack are the simplest notes" (except for the way that it would
be REAL WEIRD to show up somewhere with a big stack of 100s that ALL happened
to be series 1988 bills, i.e., some of the last ones from before the metallic
strip and microprinting were added. "oh yeah we found this in grampa's attic
when he died, donchano")

~~~
JorgeGT
Well, I can say from daily use that it's increasingly rare to see "old" 5 or
10€ bills, banks are quite diligent in retiring money! So as you say pretty
much anyone you would try to pay with an stack of "old" money would be quite
suspicious. Although in our case even the "old" ones are pretty "new" compared
to the old US ones.

