Ever wonder where that dollar bill in your wallet has been? Each bill has a secret life of its own, one that remains mysterious to Americans, whose lives and wallets the bills pass through. After all, scientists can track the daily movements of exotic animals like wildebeest with radio transmitters; not so with the humble workhorse dollar bill. But we can sketch some guideposts in a typical bill's voyage from printer to shredder. The following are key steps in the life cycle of the dollar bill:
Step 1: A Sheet of Very Special Paper
Dollar bills get their start as sheets of paper produced by a private printer, Crane and Company, in Dalton, Mass. Since 1879 Crane has made the paper for American currency, which is a special recipe of 75 percent cotton, 25 percent linen, embedded with red and blue synthetic fibers.
Since the addition of security features like the metallic strip in 1990, the denomination is built into the paper. In 1996 the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing added a watermark, color-shifting ink and security features machines could read. Money needed to get fancier to thwart a new army of counterfeiters armed with color copiers and printers.
Step 2: Paper Becomes Currency
The paper for every dollar bill is transformed into currency at only two printing facilities, one in Washington, D.C., and one in Fort Worth, Texas. The government prints 35 million bills every day, worth about $635 million.
How does the government figure out how much money to print? The Federal Reserve is the government agency that sets monetary policy. It forecasts and orders the amount of each denomination banks need. The calculation takes into account local economies, weather conditions (bad weather means more wear on the bills) and seasonal trends (we tend to use more cash near Christmas).
Typically 45 percent of the new bills are singles and 15 percent are $50 and $100 bills. The $100 has been the highest denomination printed since 1969.
Step 3: Into Public Hands
The Fed, which functions like a bank for banks, delivers the new money to 10,000 banks around the country, which disperse it to the public. Once the cache leaves the bank's hands, where does it go? Everywhere. In fact, two-thirds of U.S. currency circulates overseas.
If you want to find out where that bill in your pocket has been -- or where it's headed -- you can log onto WheresGeorge.com, a Web site that tracks bills' movements. If you ever notice a bill stamped with the site's address, you can enter the serial number and see where it's been and then get word when it lands with another Web-savvy spender. Of course, only a fraction of Americans enter the bills, so even the most watched bill, a 1999 single, has only been spotted 15 times and hasn't been seen in nearly a year.
Step 4: Getting Dirtier Than You Think
Some academic studies show that the typical American bill does some hard living. In 1997 the Argonne National Laboratory found that 78 percent of bills from Miami, Houston and Chicago carried trace amounts of cocaine. Later tests have found similar results. Cocaine on cash is so commonplace that the courts have ruled that police can no longer use a drug-sniffing dog's signal to nab a suspect or to confiscate money because it's deemed drug-related. Money also doesn't have to go through the mob to be considered dirty. Studies conducted over the decades in countries around the globe have found bacteria on most paper money, which is friendlier to bacteria than coins. In 2001 Dr. Peter Ender of Wright Patterson Air Force Base Medical Center showed that 87 % of bills he collected from a local high school food stand were contaminated with germs that could make the weak sick and that 7 % carried germs that could make anyone sick. Only 6 % were clean. Later studies showed 94 % of singles carried bacteria.
The dirtiness of bills is one reason Australia is leading the charge to use a plastic currency that is supposed to be inhospitable to both germs and counterfeiters and four times as durable as paper notes. Australia introduced the rubbery-feeling bills in 1988 and now prints them for 22 other countries, including Romania, Malaysia and Mexico.
Step 5: Mingling With Fakes
The Secret Service estimates that fewer than one out of every 10,000 bills is a fake. The agency was founded in 1865 to stop counterfeiting, which then accounted for up to an astounding half of all bills in circulation.
The Federal Reserve checks for counterfeits. But it only finds 20 percent while the public and banks find 80 percent of counterfeits.
Step 6: Condemning the Dollar Bill
bill averages When banks have too much cash on hand, they send the excess to the Fed for credit to their reserve accounts (likewise, when banks need more cash, they borrow it from their Fed accounts). The Fed checks returning bills to see if they're too worn or dirty.
Bills are condemned by precise standards: if they've lost 25 percent or more of the ink on the front or 40 percent or more on the back; if there's a hole bigger than 19mm or if there's a tear 6mm or longer. Small bills ($5, $10 and $20) made before 1996 are shredded, too.
The number of years a bill circulates before it dies varies greatly. The $10 bill is the shortest lived at 18 months. Singles last 22 months, $20s typically live for 25 months and a $100 60 months.
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