In this case making money is about counterfeiting. The Art of Making Money: The Story of a Master Counterfeiter ($18) at Amazon is basically a biography of counterfeiter Art Williams. I was more interested in the technical approaches (not to give it a try!) and less in the bio, but it was a mildly interesting story for all of that. Most of you know that in the past few years they’ve put a lot of effort into making it harder to counterfeit US currency (and it wasn’t all that easy before), but this guy figured out how to in a pretty low tech way. It turned out his biggest obstacle was the watermark, he finally got around it by laminating two pieces of paper together with the outline in between. Worked fine when held up the light, but he couldn’t use him in humid climates because the edges peeled open!

It’s interesting to me for a couple reasons. One is that the general availability of color printers definitely encourages people to give it a try and it’s nice to know it ain’t that easy. The other part reminds me of magic, to large degree it’s about showing people what they expect to see. I mostly use credit cards for personal expenses and clients pay with checks or credit cards, so I don’t have to worry about bad money directly. I guess at the end it just leaves me wishing Williams had found a way to use his talents for good.

More stuff about the anti-counterfeit features at http://www.moneyfactory.gov/newmoney/.