Never mind monetary policy, we can't even get the printing of our greenbacks right.
Because of a problem with the presses, the federal government has shut down production of its flashy new $100 bills, and has quarantined more than 1 billion of them−more than 10% of all existing U.S. cash − in a vault in Fort Worth, Texas, according to CNBC.
"There is something drastically wrong here," one source told CNBC. "The frustration level is off the charts."
Initially scheduled for release in February 2011, the new bills were announced with great fanfare by officials at the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve in April.
At the time, officials announced the new bills would incorporate sophisticated high-tech security features, including a 3-D security strip and a color-shifting image of a bell designed to foil counterfeiters.
But the production process is so complex, it has instead foiled the government printers tasked with producing billions of the new notes, according to the network.
An official familiar with the situation told CNBC that 1.1 billion of the new bills have been printed, but they are unusable because of a creasing problem in which paper folds over during production, revealing a blank unlinked portion of the bill face.
