Moneymakers: The Secret World of Banknote Printing

by Klaus W. Bender

This book is about the most precious piece of paper we know, about bank-notes. Modern life would be unthinkable without them. Yet, the general public is kept very much in the dark about how they are made or who makes them. It is rarely known, for example, that despite America's technical Prowess all dollar bills are printed exclusively on German high-security printing presses using secret Swiss special inks, or that the phony 100 dollar bills, the so-called supernotes may well be printed in a top-secret printing works located just north of the white House and run by the CIA - although the US government is blaming the rogue government of North Korea for counterfeiting these bills. This book is finally lifting the veil on an industry used to absolute secrecy. It recounts the stories of a British banknote printer who, fearing the loss of his customer, informed the Egyptian secret service that the securities printing machinery the Egyptians were about to buy was of Jewish origin; of a private printer who convinced the Polish central bank that it should destroy a complete series of new, perfect banknotes which had been printed by a competitor, or of an Argentinean high-security printer who came to print genuine fake bank-notes for Zaire and Bahrain as a result of two sting operations, which smell of the Belgian and French secret service. Moneymakers, by offering a detailed view of the banknote industry and its modus operandi, removes the industry's carefully imposed shroud of secrecy. This book has been researched over a five-year period in Europe, the USA, and Latin America. The book is based exclusively on personal Interviews and confidential mate4rial normally not accessible to outsiders. There were attempts to stop this research project. Klaus W. Bender has peered behind the scenes of the Secret and exclusive world of the moneymakers. - Financial Times Deutschland, 2004 The errors and pitfalls at the birth of the euro make Bender's research so unnerving. - Suddeutsche Zeitung, 2004 Bender does not mince his words when he describes abuses - and there are lots of them. - Neue Zurcher Zeitung, 2004

Genres: Nonfiction

308 pages, Hardcover

First published July 16, 2004

Reviews

[EsraaLlaqsa · Rating 3 out of 5]

الكتاب جيد ويحتوى معلومات قيمة وفريدة ولكنه ممل بسبب التفاصيل المكررة والمتداخلة وأرى أنه لو كان تم اختصار الكثير منه لكان حجمه أقل وقيمته المعرفية أعلى

[Andrew Skretvedt · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was originally German, and this English translation was also developed and printed in Germany. It has slightly bizarre typesetting, using guillemots in place of quotation marks (except in one place in the preface, where a mixture was used), inward-pointing opposite of the way the French use their guillemots. Also English hyphenation rules break words on syllables, but here the hyphenation was done at any letter, hurting readability a little bit. There were also basic proofreading mistakes throughout which caused the book to seem a bit silly at times. The publisher should have worked with a USA firm for the English release, or at least had more native English speakers assist in the production. But, I'm sure this can all be explained in trying to hold down costs. Okay fine, the damage is by no means fatal to the product. The type style and layout, however, were exceptional. It was a joy to handle this hardcover edition.

On the book's subject, technical details were a little sparse, but not totally absent. It reads more like a business & industry book, except the players are niche and generally secretive, but no less rapacious at times. *wink* Lots of fun anecdotes throughout. The chapter near the end discusses the US $100 supernotes, and provides a *very* compelling case that the CIA was and is their source, not North Korea, as promoted in American media. This part of the book was actually my favorite! This section presented a key detail that absolutely 100% of their visual features were perfectly copied, making manual, human-based counterfeit detection dang near impossible. However, automated banknote validation equipment for the US market could and did, at the same time, instantly reject 100% of the supernotes. So...While USA users were are are scared by media that North Korea could be attacking and contaminating the money supply, USA domestic users of the cash had basically -zero- to worry about. Just as soon as any (unwitting or not) supernote user made a deposit to their regular bank, they'd be getting a call and perhaps a brief interview from a secret service agent or other investigator. Since the vast majority of American consumers, and basically all American business, re-deposit received cash quickly, any supernote injection would be flagged and pulled about as fast as it would land ashore.

For the CIA, paying for covert ops (almost certainly of dubious moral/ethical/legal repute) this way seems rather a ingenious move. I'm sure there must have been other use-cases for supernotes thusly designed, too. You could get them into the hands of someone suspected of being part of some terrorist network, and then watch reports come in from banks about counterfeits being rejected to see where the network stretches, who their suppliers or partnering organizations are, etc.

The book didn't say, but I'm reasonably confident that inter-government agreements could have shared supernote detection measures such that coordinating governments could exercise some control over where supernotes pop back out of the system of hand-to-hand cash. Then the only way to stay under cover would be for introduced supernotes to /never/ return to the international banking system, but remain as hand-to-hand cash. The more modern/technically enriched/1st-world you go, the less practical it seems that you'd keep your liquid assets as physical cash and not utilize banking services.

The story reminded me of the time during Iraq War 2/Afganistan-perma-war that US news outlets were reporting stories about the Defense Department being basically un-auditable, and that the Pentagon had even lost track of some $2 bln. in palletized cash for transport that was "supposed" to be for ATMs at US bases overseas. What? Maybe the lost cash consisted of CIA supernotes, and by "lost" it was actually a cover story to help inspire foreign users of US cash that the new cash finding its way into their midst was genuine, the US was concerned over losing it, and they'd be silly not to regard it as good money for their own uses.

Why not?

The truth is probably stranger than fiction on this.

[Abdallah Moh · Rating 3 out of 5]

الكتاب ليس سيئا . بل ممتع ويحوي معلومات جديدة ومجهولة بالنسبة لنا . رغم حجمه الكبير الا ان قراءته ليست مملة بشكل يتعب . .

ربما هناك عيبان فيه :
اولا: انه كان يمكن اختصاره الى الثلثين . فثلث الكتاب تحسه أحيانا مكرر.
ثانيا : ان الكتاب يعتبر قديما حيث تم تأليفه آواخر ٢٠٠٤ او ٢٠٠٥ . وبالتالي هناك مستجدات هائلة في مجال صناعة النقود الورقية منذ ذلك الوقت حتى وقتنا الراهن

- عبدالله

[Ebraheem Albarmaki · Rating 3 out of 5]

=صُنَّاع النقود: العالم السِّرِّي لطباعة أوراق النقد

=كلاوس بيندر

=ترجمة خالد غريب علي


يدور هذا الكتاب حول أثمن «قطعة ورق» نعرفها؛ ألا وهي أوراق النقْد. اختُرعتِ النقود الورقية على أيدي الصينيين، وبعد ذلك بألف عامٍ، كان المستعمِرون الأمريكيون أول مَن استخدمها استخدامًا مُمنْهجًا في العالم الغربي، حتى إنهم موَّلوا ثورتَهم بإصدار أعداد هائلة من أوراق الدولار. من الصعب تصوُّر الحياة الحديثة دونَ نُقُود ورقية؛ ومع ذلك يُخفَى عن عامة الناس كيف تُصنع أوراق النقْد ومن يصنعها، وتُعلَّل هذه السِّرية دائمًا بأنها ضمانة خاصة «مشروعة» لمنتَج شديد الخصوصية. غير أن هذه السِّرِّية ترتبط أيضًا بهيكل السوق، وهو هيكل غير عاديٍّ ومُسيَّسٌ إلى حد بعيد، على نحوٍ يُذكِّرنا على الفور بصناعة السلاح. ولكن هذا الهوس بالسِّرية يبدو في غير موضعه في عصر الإنترنت، وهذا الكتاب هو الأول من نوعه الذي يُلقِي نظرة متعمِّقة على عالم صناعة أوراق النقد.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

A journey into the world of printing money...for the most part a tedious read. Like every other type of printing it is a race to the bottom. So basically the story of printing in general with a smattering of interesting stories about counterfeiting and security.

This has been written by a non-native English speaker and it comes out in the translation. Structured with frequently odd sentence structures makes this a tough read.

If you are interested in printing or money then it might be worth a read.

[Ahmed Haamed · Rating 3 out of 5]

الكتاب جيد إلى حد كبير وبه الكثير من المعلومات عن تاريخ النقود و صناعتها وتاريخ صناعة الآت طبع النقود والشركات العالمية الحكومية والخاصة التي لها دخل بتلك الصناعة المؤمنة والسرية وتاريخ عمليات تزوير العملات الورقية في شتى بقاع العالم. وأيضا ما يتعلق بالصعوبات والتحديات التي واجهت دول الإتحاد الأوروبي أثناء طبعها واخراجها لعملة اليورو.

[DeeDee 3kk · Rating 3 out of 5]

كتاب فظيع فب معلومات رائعه عن تزيف النقود
وان عمليات الاحتيال ممكن ان تؤدي الي حروب

ينفع يصير فيلم
او فيلم عن حياة نعيم خنافر وعمليات الاحتيال تبعته

[Mostafa Geraw · Rating 2 out of 5]

مش ممتع قد ما هو غني بتفاصيل المعلومات.. ممل بس مفيد

[Ebraheem Albarmaki · Rating 4 out of 5]

لمعرفة اسرار صناعة العملة وطريقة التلاعب بالأسعار والإبتزاز السياسي

[Hamid · Rating 1 out of 5]

نصيحة : لا تقرأه
الكتاب عبارة حشو و تكرار للمعلومات لا أكثر و لا أقل .