John of Gwent
Counterfeiters Lose Faith In The Euro - They Think It Is No Longer Worth Faking
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Written by John of Gwent
Source: THIS page on "Business Insider"
Alas, I cannot claim the credit for finding this. That honour must go to someone that frequents a debate forum I contribute to in various ways from time to time. However, before you read another word, put down any hot drinks and make sure that when you fall off your chair you will not land on anything fragile.
It would appear that banknote counterfeiters have abandoned the Euro as a source of useful profit.
Over on this page the European Central Bank publishes details of the total number of forged euro currency notes pulled from circulation each half year. Figures are available from the first half of 2004 to the first half of 2012 and if you click the first link above you will see this in a graphical form.
Admittedly the graph skews the facts by only showing the top part of the "Y" axis - a typical statistical trick to make more of the noise on the signal than one would see if one saw the whole of the axis, but it shows a pretty linear rise from 270,000 such notes in the first half of 2007 to 450,000 in the latter part of 2009, and then just as meteoric a drop from then to today, pausing briefly for a slight upward blip at the time of the last welsh assembly election. Why that should be I do not know, but maybe Peter Hain should take a closer look at the contents of his donations bucket ?
The figures are not the sum of money, but the number of notes, and here we have an interesting revelation. The counterfeiters prefer to fake the 20 and 50 Euro Notes, abandoning the 500 Euro (which is after all the money launderer's note of choice, best not piss them off, eh) and they also scorn the Five Euro note (as fiddling small change I presume)
The overwhelming feeling put out by this link is that even the people that make their money from faking currency are abandoning the Euro as a suitable currency to fake, as they fear it will soon crash and they will be left with wheel barrow loads of worthless fake money just as worthless as the real stuff in the doomsday scenario.
Of course, the europhiles will say the drop in the numbers of notes seized reflects the difficulty of counterfeiting euronotes with new security measures.
I'm more inclined to believe it's either because as the article claims even the fakers think the currency is doomed, or maybe because they can't get the cocaine to give the fake notes the authenticity they need. Or more likely that even the ECB knows the currency is junk and worthless and can't be arsed to do the job of rooting out fake notes any more.
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