Texas police tell little girl she is in "big trouble" for buying school meal with $2 bill

[manybellsdown]

A favorite series of mine, from the long-lost state of New Mexico: http://www.nmmagazine.com/one-of-our-50-is-missing/

[Mister44]

@anon15383236

Good to hear you at least support public schools in priniciple, if not in your own parental actions.

Well I still pay taxes.

And I would have been fine with a public school. Her mother was in mostly private schools and insisted on it.

[wrecksdart]

@anon29631895

I blame all the folks who never spend their $2 bills.

[Pinkerton]

I’ve helped a friend bind stacks of $2 bills into tear-off pads. It’s surprisingly easy. And amusing!

[wrecksdart]

@clifyt

about the only reason they stay in existence are for strip clubs.

I guess I need to speak to my grandmother. She sends these to me and my brother on our birthdays and when the mood strikes her. Hafta give ole Easy Bunny a call tonight and say hi.

[redesigned]

@Mister44

I was going to say, the Silver certificates all say it somewhere. I have never seen a gold one in the wild.

Yeah my silver notes all say silver on them and have blue seals.
i’ve never even seen the gold seal bills, they are neat looking.

[anon29631895]

@longname

healthy democracy is based on the citizenry having a reasonable healthy distrust of all levels of government. That distrust breeds diligence and oversight.

Don’t forget an informed citizenry… another failure for Texas.

[Gyrofrog]

@wrecksdart

I guess I need to speak to my grandmother. She sends these to me and my brother on our birthdays and when the mood strikes her.

Wait, fifties or twos? My grandfather used to get $2 bills at the bank so he could drop 'em in with greeting cards. (The other thing he’d do was tape in a stick of Big Red gum and write “I hope you CHEWS to have a happy birthday!”)

At one point, in my early 20s, I’d accumulated 5 $2 bills and a few Kennedy half-dollars. I went to Tower Records and bought Miles Davis’s On the Corner (which had just come out on CD). The $2 bills had been out-of-print long enough that the clerk asked me, “are you sure you want to spend these?” I actually hesitated for a sec. I said, “my grandfather keeps sending them, I don’t think he wants me to leave 'em in a drawer.”

[wrecksdart]

$2’s, Miss Bunny is no spendthrift.

And that sounds like the perfect way to spend some $2 bills, although I say that as a non-numismatist.

[Ratel]

Because their bosses are exactly as stupid.

And god help you try to buy something with dollar coins. “Yeah, but those aren’t real money, you can’t use those.”

And all of these people have drivers’ licenses, and are allowed to pilot three ton SUVs at 75 miles an hour on the freeway.

[tachin1]

This is probably why I’m fat:
(I’ll assume a translation is not necessary)

[d_r]

@emohex1

This happened in the United States, what kind of country allows this kind of thing to happen.

I have currency from the UK that I can’t use because they changed the bill style and deprecated the old. At least US currency stays valid after it is discontinued.

[anon15383236]

Really? You can’t even exchange it like, a bank?

[Mister44]

@d_r

I have currency from the UK that I can’t use because they changed the bill style and deprecated the old. At least US currency stays valid after it is discontinued.

That reminds me about when the changed the design of the $100s. I guess in Russia people save their money in American money, specifically 100s. They were freaking out it would be worthless, but the US doesn’t depreciate old currency. At least not this time.

Isn’t most of the old Euro currency worthless since they converted to Euros? You were supposed to turn it in and convert it, yes?

[renke]

Though the Deutschmark is not a legal tender anymore it will be indefinitely exchanged to Euros by the Bundesbank. I don’t know the specifics of other currencies absorbed by the Euro.

[anon75430791]

At a static or variable rate?

Probably doesn’t matter. The forex traders would have to be very muscular indeed to take advantage of it.

[Mister44]

All this reminds me of the Scooby Doo where the ghost is after buried treasure and it turns out it’s Confederate money and worthless.

Only- some Confederate money is worth money to collectors.

[anon67050589]

@renke

Though the Deutschmark is not a legal tender anymore it will be indefinitely exchanged to Euros by the Bundesbank.

That is good to know. I have a smattering of old coins from various countries prior to the EU, Deutschmarks (Deutschmarken?) being chief among the pile.

[renke]

All local currencies have a fixed irrevocable exchange rate, defined in 1998. One Euro will be DM 1.95583 until the universe collapses (rough estimate).

[d_r]

Not only can’t I do it now, I couldn’t do it when I first tried only a few years after the deprecation, and I tried it at a bank where I still had an account.

I also have a box full of old European currency - D-marks, francs, lire - but that is a different (ahem) issue.

The problem - as Mister44 says - is that when the bills get deprecated you’ have a fixed window in which to do the exchange, but that is difficult if you are halfway around the world.

I also have a bunch of Norwegian 10 øre pieces, I might still be able to trade those in but they are not worth very much. Norway will be changing its bills next year, I have to get back before then to use some of the bigger bills I have.

@renke

Though the Deutschmark is not a legal tender anymore it will be indefinitely exchanged to Euros by the Bundesbank. I don’t know the specifics of other currencies absorbed by the Euro.

That is interesting; I haven’t tried with my Deutschmarks, but the Italian bank laughed at me when I tried to exchange back some Lire.