Currency

ISEE THAT Pepsi has a new patriotic can with a picture of the Empire State Building and the Pledge of Allegiance on it. But Pepsi decided that "they didn't want to offend anyone" by putting the words "under God" on the can. Well, I'm offended that they left it off. This is yet another case of hypocrisy in this world of ungodly creatures. Money, which is all anyone cares about, has a big four-word phrase on every single piece of currency that says "In God We Trust. " America: The country of idiots.

When it comes to money, some people are slow to accept change. Oh, the blubbering of the bland, the screeching of the fuddy-duddies, the moaning of the fearful who would have America forever be the land of the green and the home of the staid. This is what they are carping about, this wee little step the new $20 bill takes toward polychromy? The green, peach and blue in the background make the bill look like a white shirt that got mixed in with a load of bleeding colors. What a half-hearted, even chintzy, splash of color.

Any day now, the first new design in American currency in 66 years will be in circulation. Not that most of us will notice, since it affects only $100 bills and, alas, not many wallets are clogged with those. In this redesign, Ben Franklin, the only non-president to be featured on the face of U.S. currency, will shed the little fur collar he has been wearing for years. His new portrait will be larger and move to the left. More importantly, the new design features a watermark that can be seen only if the note is held up to the light.

Frequent international business travelers find favorite ways to pay expenses in foreign countries. Some carry travelers checks; some use credit cards; others like the ease of getting foreign currency using a bank ATM or credit card. Currency dealers suggest that you use all of these services - plus get some foreign cash from them before you leave home. Thomas Cook, one of the world's largest foreign-exchange services, in its "Tips for Travelers" brochure, notes that each method of paying costs abroad has advantages.

American tourists heading for Europe, especially Germany, could be among the immediate benefactors from Danish ratification of the Maastricht treaty for European unification. Even before all the "yes" votes were counted Tuesday, the dollar and other major currencies strengthened against the German mark, which currency traders had bought as a safe haven. Despite problems that still lie ahead, political leaders around Europe breathed a collective sigh of relief at the Danish vote, since a "no" might have derailed the entire process toward economic and monetary union.

Could Ben Franklin, just shy of his 300th birthday, lose his place on the $100 bill? One of the ideas bandied about to memorialize Ronald Reagan is to put the former president's portrait on the C-note, where Philadelphia's most famous citizen has smiled benignly since 1914. Already booted off the half-dollar coin to make way for John F. Kennedy in 1964, Franklin would lose his last prominent perch in modern America if he vanished from the nation's biggest bill. The printer-inventor-philosopher-author-diplomat-founding father still retains a hold on the popular imagination and deserves to keep his place on the currency, says Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, a best-selling 2003 biography.

This takes money laundering to a different level. Customs and Border Protection agents at Philadelphia International Airport seized more than $11,000 from a Jamaica-bound passenger on Saturday after he tried to hide the cash, stashing some of it in six boxes of Irish Spring Soap in his luggage, officials said today. There is no limit to how much cash can be brought in, or taken out, of the country, but travelers are required to declare amounts in excess of $10,000. The passenger was released and allowed to depart Saturday after agents returned $200 to him and seized the remaining $11,143 he was carrying.

European debt problems have kept financial markets on edge during much of the last two years, but it is the debt problem in the United States that is far more likely to precipitate a global crisis. Recently, Lawrence Goodman, a former crisis-prevention analyst at the U.S. Treasury, sounded the alarm that investors balked at low coupon rates last year, forcing the Fed to buy "a stunning … 61 percent of the total net issuance of U.S. government debt. " His view that ballooning deficits and excessive debt put the U.S. economy and markets at risk for a sharp correction also explains why the recovery is so weak and why trillions of dollars remain sidelined.

Last week's sudden currency crisis in Europe is less about the collapse of monetary values than the collapse of an idea. The idea envisioned 12 Western European nations overcoming centuries of bloody conflict to unite by century's end - one economy, one currency, one foreign policy. But the politicians who shaped this vision failed to consider sufficiently the concerns of ordinary citizens. Nor did they adequately assess the compromises each nation would have to make to reap the gains.

Through the second half of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th, U.S. currency celebrated the energy of the frontier, national expansion, the rise of technology and its own fiscal stability. The bills, larger than today's, were an engraver's paradise, for they offered a large area to fill with portraiture, landscapes, elegant lettering and often an array of color. One of the most famous engravings is Walter Shirlaw's Electricity Presenting Light to the World, a heroic tableau that spread across the obverse of currency printed in the 1890s.