[A_C_Slater]

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You would try to pass a $100 bill at McDonalds?!!? I thought they call in the VP of Operations if someone tries to buy a Big Mac with a C-note. [img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

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Back in my mute non-balla days, I remember going to Vegas and being weirded out that the ATMs dispensed $100s. Then I used one to buy a Beef 'n Cheddar at Arby's. They weren't even mildly phased, and I don't believe they checked it.

Anyway, our economy is built on counterfeit money, has been for centuries. It spends the same. What, you think our Federal Reserve Notes are backed by anything? Money is a societal construct. It's worth what you can convince somebody it is, no matter who made it.

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From the Sci-fi book Schrodinger's Cat by Robert Anton Wilson:

The Federal Reserve did create money out of nothing. So did all the other banks. The laws of Unistat allowed this, by permitting banks to issue loans up to as much as 8 times the amount they had in deposits. Every time a bank made a loan on money they didn't actually have, they were creating money.

Most of the people who knew about this (aside from the bankers) went paranoid worrying about it. This was because they did not realize how much their Reality was created in similarly occult ways.

The Federal Reserve made it possible for other banks to loan what they didn't have. The Fed "guaranteed" the credit of the banks.

The Fed was able to make this guarantee because it had lot of credit itself, in the form of government bonds.

The government bonds were good because they were guaranteed by the loans from the Fed.

The loans from the Fed were good because the government gave them bonds.

And this was safe, because the bonds (remember) were guaranteed by the Fed.