Rollin’ in the Euros
Jay-Z’s new single for the American Gangster soundtrack, Blue Magic, is a poignant symbol of America’s decline — he’s flashing 500 euro notes in the video instead of the classic Benjamins. An email correspondent of Mark Hemingway claims that the 500 bill was consciously designed with drug dealers in mind:
The European Central Bank more or less consciously designed the 500 Euro note (now worth around $900) to be the drug smuggler’s currency of choice. The US Treasury has ignored the pleas of the drug dealers to issue larger denomination bills; see Scarface (the Pacino version) for the difficulty of doing a million dollar drug deal with mere $100 notes. When the ECB announced that they would issue a 500 Euro note it was quite clear they were targeting a particular market to encourage the usage of the currency.
While the reliability of Corner emailers in regard to the EU is probably right around 1%, the idea that an otherwise reputable organization would design a product specifically for drug dealers isn’t all that unbelievable. I mean, who else buys prepaid phone plans in cash?
UPDATE: Via Garance, we have news that Gisele Bundchen is now demanding to be paid in currency other than the US dollar. If the rappers and supermodels are abandoning the greenback, shouldn’t we all?
