U.S. court: currency discriminates against the blind

[Sapiens]

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...30825720080520

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Treasury Department discriminates against millions of Americans who are blind or have poor vision by printing paper money that makes it impossible for them to distinguish between denominations, a federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday.

By a 2-1 vote, the court upheld a ruling by U.S. District Judge James Robertson in a lawsuit filed by the American Council of the Blind seeking to force the department to redesign the U.S. paper currency.

The group has proposed several possible changes, including different sized bills for different denominations, embossed dots and raised printing. The court called such accommodations reasonable, effective and feasible.

And you thought the Amero was just conspiracy nutjob hot air. Welcome to the perfect opportunity for a new domestic currency. Tough for all the drug dealers and money launderers that have no Gov. high level connections.

[Starving Steve]

Re: U.S. court: currency discriminates against the blind

I have no problem at all with a re-design of U.S. currency to make the currency more decernable to the blind.... Why would anyone have a problem with this accommodation to the needs of the blind?

Also, the U.S. government has NEVER de-monitized any of its old currency, so old currency is just as good as new currency. The same is true in Canada with old Canadian money: an old beaver buck is just as good as a new beaver buck.

Olympic Canadian money is just as good as regular Canadian money provided that you bring your Olympic coin to the Royal Bank of Canada in any major city. Or you can bring Olympic coin to the Bank of Canada, and they will redeem it for you..... But Olympic money is made of silver, so no-one would want to spend it now, anyway.

I can recall, years ago in Regina, Saskatchewan redeeming a $100 gold 14K Olympic coin at the Bank of Canada. They took the gold coin on collection, and in a few days, they called me in to the bank and gave me a cheque for $100 drawn on the Bank of Canada.

My $100 14K gold coin at the time was worth only about $100 in gold, so there was little or no cost in doing this --- except for the time to expend doing this. ( Ofcourse, to-day, some three decades later, the coin would be worth far more in gold than in face value.)

As for the proposed Amero, the currency would be legal tender throughout Mexico, the U.S, and Canada...... This sounds like a good idea to me.

An even better idea would be to back the Amero in gold or silver and to make the currency redeemable in gold or silver at the Bank of Canada, the Federal Reserve Bank in the U.S, and at the Bank of Mexico.

But this return to the gold standard (or a form of the gold standard) would mean a C-change in the thinking at these central banks. Such a C-change in thinking is difficult to imagine happening.... Perhaps after a period of hyper-inflation, such a re-thinking of policy might have more chance of happening.