Be honest about it. When you look at the new design of US money, what's the first thing you think? Monopoly money. What's the next thing? Doesn't our new money, with the off center pictures and the large, purple numbers, look like that stuff you get in a Banana Republic? It doesn't look real. It isn't real, of course. Our money isn't based on anything more than what we think, not on what we really have. What we think has been nonsense. It's finally caught up to us, except in government. That's why the government is going to spend a trillion dollars we don't have to save an economy that isn't real.

You arrive in some Banana Republic and go straight to the money exchange. You hand over a thousand dollars of our funny money and get some of their funny money. You look at the stuff and think it looks like something that was meant to be put on a billboard or spray painted on a LA building. It doesn't look real. Then you look at the number. It's not something reasonable such as 50 or 100. It's always 50,000 0r 100,000. You know there's nothing in this place worth a hundred thousand anything. You glance at the clerk and find she's looking at your money the same way. You feel insulted because you're an American and she's some dumb foreigner. She felt insulted because you can't buy anything here with a hundred anything. A cup of very cheap coffee cost 500 something.

Canadian money looks like a coupon from the newspaper. It has the face of Queen Elisabeth on it. The Queen? They use the image of a foreign monarch to decorate their money? Maybe it has to do with the fact that we fought a bloody war for independence while the Canadian conned the Brits. Took a little longer but was a little less messy. Still, the Queen?

One of the great fun things about traveling to England used to be the money, or at least trying to figure it out. Loved Great Britain's "That'll be 5,8 and 3, guv". You gave him a tenner and the change was 4,11 and 6. Or so he said. You'd think- OK, it's 33 pence to the shilling, 30 shilling to the pound so- just hand a bunch of money over and hope the clerk took the right amount. The clerk always did since the Brits are honorable. The Brits have an understated sense of humor so you didn't know until you left the country and cashed out.

Joss money. Joss money is sold everywhere in China. You're supposed to burn it to please your ancestors. It looks as real as our money. Possibly more real except for the Chinaman in the center. That doesn't throw you because China has most of our money. Bill Gates has the rest. The number is high, 5000, but better than 50,000. The more you look at it, the more real it looks. You think that you may have a lot of Chinese money that you can convert into a fair amount of American currency. You're a little excited until you go to exchange it. The clerk looks at the joss money and then at you. Then he hits the alarm for their version of a treasury agent. You get arrested for counterfeiting. The agent laughs and makes fun of you for making something so goofy and cheesy looking. You don't get it since he speaks Kung Fu instead of English like a civilized person. Getting arrested in China is exactly the same as being found guilty. You'll have plenty of time to learn Chinese in prison.