How To Tell If Your Money Is Real
There’s a lot of counterfeit money out there right now. A businessman in Indonesia was even just recently arrested for trying to pass off $1M bills! Maybe the Fed should take notice, and take advantage of his foresight by just copying the design he already forged… maybe it will save them some money on making new printing plates in a year or two. :D
Anyways, if you want to be sure your money is real, and not the counterfeit stuff floating all over the globe, do the following things:
1) Take the money out of your pocket
2) Drop it
3) Listen for the sound
If the sound is “ching”, congratulations, it’s probably money. Unfortunately, you probably don’t have much, but what you do have is worth something. If the money is yellowish or whitish, you may really have something good! Even if the chunks of metal are just plain ol' zinc wafer they'll still be worth *something*, someday, because they can be melted down and turned into stuff. Save those chunks of metal money.
If the sound is “thud”, congratulations, that’s good money! Bullion always has exchange value. “Bully” for you, as Teddy “Big Stick” Roosevelt would say! (He's dead, so no bully for him.. but for you with your "thud"-money, bully-bully-bully!)
If there is no sound when you drop your money, because your money is made of paper, well… sorry to say: it’s not really very good money. It might be modern art, or future wallpaper, but it isn’t *really* money, because it fails the "scarce" test.
If the paper has bright colors, and has a picture of a lady in a crown, then you can hold on to it anyways. It’s fairly good stuff. If it is only green (or at least mostly green), and if it has a picture of some old guy in a wig, or if it says “Federal Reserve” on it… you should probably go ahead and trade that stuff for “thud” or “ching” money, or maybe for the colorful paper with a lady on it.
Unless you have "a thing" for carrying around portable wallpaper, that is. ;)
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The same people NEVER think of applying that same harsh and rigid standard to the scraps of paper in their wallets (and purses).
In fact, assuming that you accept the definition of "money" which I use in my writing, then gold and silver DO have "intrinsic value" as the only natural and universally accepted forms of "money" - in a world which requires money to conduct its commerce.