America's fancy new hundred dollar bills are apparently so hard to actually print that the Federal Reserve has quarantined more than a billion of the new Benjamins within "special vaults" in Fort Worth and D.C. The screwed-up moneys are the first to feature the signature of Timothy Geithner, so they're already morally worthless, but that's actually true of all American cash. And becausenobody knows what's wrong with the new hundreds, the government says it would take up to thirty years for people (government employees) to go through the stacks of bills and try to stuff as many as possible into their butts take out the bad ones.

CNBC, via the indispensable Cryptogon, has this report:

The problem with the new hundred-dollar bills has remained largely hidden from public view, despite a press release issued by the Federal Reserve on October 1 that announced "a delay in the issue date" of the new bills and cited "a problem with sporadic creasing of the paper."

The redesigned bills are the first $100 bills to feature Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s signature. But to stave off a cash crunch as existing $100 bills deteriorate and can’t be replaced, the Federal Reserve has ordered renewed production of the current-design $100 bills, which feature Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's signature and do not have the new security features.

Officials say that is an important step, because there are 6.6 billion $100 notes in circulation at any given time, and they wear out quickly.

If hundreds were simply *laminated,* they would survive their main duty (being rolled up into tubes and stuck up people's drippy noses) for much longer and then we wouldn't have yet another reason (today) for calling Geithner an incompetent asshole. But whatever, this is not a financial blog. (Yet.) [CNBC]