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From a 2014 reddit post[0]: > This is actually not a million dollars in singles. It is over $1,000,000. The box was created with the wrong dimensions by the contractor, but they still decided to fill it, display it, and claim it is $1,000,000. > > Source: Tour Guide at the Chicago Fed [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/2f9sp7/one_million_do...
As we say in my family: "close enough for government work!"
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> Maybe it's easy for the Fed to acquire more cash as long as it's guaranteed not to be spent. The Fed doesn't acquire cash, it creates it. USD banknotes are liabilities of the Fed, but that concept only makes sense when somebody other than itself owns them.
No. We have a double accounting system. For every $1 it creates, it has to create an equivalent liability. And when something is budgeted for $1 Million, it is $1m nothing more nothing less
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I also think it’s funny that so many comments assume they would have lax accounting for the extra $500K, or that the artists could have casually asked for another $500K of old bills to use as filler and the request would have been granted. The Fed is extremely rigorous in tracking these things. It isn’t a couple guys in a room playing casually with millions of dollars. Even the retired bills are thoroughly monitored…
There was a danish artist that got a very large amount of cash to do a similar in spirit artwork. He then named it “take the money and run” and showcased what amounted to an empty frame.
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No. We have a double accounting system. For every $1 it creates, it has to create an equivalent liability. And when something is budgeted for $1 Million, it is $1m nothing more nothing less
I mean, that's a very corporate accounting way of looking at it. But countries are not corporations, or even banks, and the abstraction is so leaky it's pretty much never worth using.
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It could be that they measured a stack of bills sitting on a table, then did the math to make a metal frame to contain $1,000,000. But they didn't account for stacks compressing under the weight of higher stacks, and it wouldn't look as nice if the top part of the cube was empty. Still, it does seem like it would be cheaper to rebuild the case than to add $500k to it. Maybe it's easy for the Fed to acquire more cash…
It's the cost of paper not the dollar value. Also only the outermost bills need be real the rest could just be paper, or voided bills or whatever. But accounting can cover it. It's not gold or pennies where the currency costs what it is worth to make
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That'd be fun, but I am pretty sure they get it electronically into their bank account — as in, no money is ever made for their salaries, just like most white collar workers.
Demand deposits in bank accounts are also money. As a side note: In some countries, central bank employees are the only individuals that can actually hold non-paper M0 (or MB?) money, since they get paid their salaries into a central bank account, which are otherwise only available to commercial banks. This used to be the case in Germany and Austria, but has been phased out at some point, as far as I remember. But ev…
https://hrreview.co.uk/hr-news/strategy-news/bank-england-cl...
> For all we know, the middle is just air and crumpled-up old newspaper. I think this is the answer. I suspect the exhibit designers had a cool idea for a display, did a rough estimate of the area needed and then commissioned the exhibit builders to make the big metal-framed cube. Either they made an error in their calculation or the innate variability in the size of stacks of used bills threw it off. It's also possi…
It could be that they measured a stack of bills sitting on a table, then did the math to make a metal frame to contain $1,000,000. But they didn't account for stacks compressing under the weight of higher stacks, and it wouldn't look as nice if the top part of the cube was empty. Still, it does seem like it would be cheaper to rebuild the case than to add $500k to it. Maybe it's easy for the Fed to acquire more cash…
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> The folks responsible for collecting and destroying used bills tend to be exacting in their auditing for obvious reasons. So when the exhibit designers got $1M in used bills approved and released, that's exactly how much they got. But who says that they didn't actually request $1.5M in used bills after doing the math of what it would take to make a cube. Or fill it up with $1M in used bills, and come back and make…
Because going >50% over-budget isn't a good way to further anyone's career in exhibit design, engineering and construction. I have a friend who works at a firm which specializes in engineering and constructing exhibits for museums and all kinds of public spaces. There's a whole industry ecosystem around doing this. They get brought in on contracts by design firms which specialize in permanent installation exhibits wh…
An engineer or artist that reliably find ways to go 50% over budget and generate contract extensions is a highly sought professional amongst vendors that specialize in the public sector.
In gov work contract extensions are almost guaranteed, provided your company also have the civic spirit of contributing to our democracy with health campaign donations.
In case you wondered, $1M in cash ($100 bills) weigh approximately 22 pounds (about 10 kilograms). Last week I was watching that episode of Better Call Saul where he carries $7M throughout the desert for 36 hours, and realized his bags were supposed to get ripped 4 minutes into the process. -- Calculation by Claude: Here's the calculation: A single US banknote weighs about 1 gram regardless of denomination. So 70,000…
> In case you wondered, $1M in cash ($100 bills) weigh approximately 15.4 pounds (about 10 kilograms). Your answer is incorrect. You asked Claude to calculate $7M, which netted 154 pounds, but you then divided it by 10 instead of 7 to get the weight of $1M. Further, it's quite irrelevant here, as the display involves $1 banknotes, not $100 bills. The correct answer, without the need for an LLM, is: 1 million bills ti…
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> Maybe it's easy for the Fed to acquire more cash as long as it's guaranteed not to be spent. The Fed doesn't acquire cash, it creates it. USD banknotes are liabilities of the Fed, but that concept only makes sense when somebody other than itself owns them.
No. We have a double accounting system. For every $1 it creates, it has to create an equivalent liability. And when something is budgeted for $1 Million, it is $1m nothing more nothing less