Teacher:In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Teacher: Now, understand the problem? Solve this instance: The new and improved 100-dollar bill, designed to cut down on counterfeiters, was expected to be released back in 2010, but production snafus delayed that date to 2011, and then again to October 2013. Today, David Wolman of The New Yorker reports that 30 million of the new $100 bills were incorrectly produced, and so the Federal Reserve might have to delay the bills' release once again. 
  
 It's another embarrassing problem for the Federal Reserve, which budgeted for the bills' release, and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which was responsible for its production. (Appropriately, the bureau's website is named moneyfactory.gov.) The bills' release in October can still be salvaged if the Fort Worth, Texas branch of production makes up for the problems at the Washington, D.C. mint printer, but that timetable might not be feasible. Update: A spokesperson for the Bureau says that despite "concerns during production validation" at the D.C. branch, the fulfillment of the complete money order to the Federal Reserve remains on schedule for this fall. 
  
 Importantly, though, the problem won't cost the government that much to fix, even though the bills represent $3 billion. Because the defective bills were not approved for release to the public, the cost of this faulty episode won't approach that number. Certainly, the production of new bills and disposal of the defective bills will cost taxpayers. Exactly how much will this error cost? With some back-of-the-napkin calculations, we came to a cost of $3.79 million. Let's go through that process. 
  
 The old $100 bill cost just 7.8 cents to make, according to the Fed, but the newer version's state-of-the-art features — including a 3D security ribbon, color-changing liberty bell, and watermarks galore — will surely increase the cost of production. The Fed's budget plan lists the new $100 at 12.6 cents per bill, which comes near an estimate in a 2010 article in The Washington Post that the new Benjamins would cost about 12 cents to produce. 
  
 Now let's do some basic math. 12.6 cents, or .126 dollars, multiplied by 30 million defective bills, comes out to wasted production cost of $3.78 million. So production of 30 million replacement 100-dollar bills will only cost about .1% of the value of those bills. 
  
 In addition, there are the costs of disposal of the defective money. A 2011 article in The Atlantic explains that about 6 billion bills are disposed every year. With 37 regional Fed banks, this comes to about 160 million bills per branch. In a 1997 article in The New York Times, an executive at the Fed branch in Los Angeles said disposal of his undisclosed amount of bills amounted to $60,000 annually. Let's assume that all Fed branches pay the same amount for money disposal (again, these are estimates). Using proportions, we see that if disposal of 160 million bills costs 60 grand, then disposal of 30 million 100-dollar bills will cost $12,000. 
  
 That $12,000 cost is not that much compared to the previous $3.78 million estimation, and added together, we now come to a cost of about $3.79 million dollars for disposal of defective bills and production of new ones. There are, in addition, costs for employees, overtime, and inspections, but the simple cost of disposing the defective bills and introducing the new ones won't be terribly costly for taxpayers. 
  
 Pretty strange to consider that all the money in your wallet isn't worth much, no? And therein lies the truly important cost of the error, as Wolman notes: 
  
 "It threatens to injure the aura—the almightiness—of the dollar that enables most people to go about their business without ever stopping to examine the bills in their hand or to contemplate what gives them value. The only thing conferring value on those dollars, of course, is trust in other people’s trust in them, which is both weird and magnificent." 
  
 Yes, trust in money is all that matters here. Which is why the continued bungling by the Fed and Bureau to produce new $100 bills is concerning, though not for the small monetary costs of the error. 
  
 Photos of new $100 bills: Bureau of Engraving and Printing; Photo of pile of $100 bills: REUTERS/Lee Jae-Won 
  
 Want to add to this story? Let us know in comments or send an email to the author at elevenson at theatlantic dot com. You can share ideas for stories on the Open Wire. 
  
 Eric Levenson ||||| For the past few years, the Federal Reserve has been preparing to introduce a redesigned hundred-dollar bill into circulation. It will have a Liberty Bell that changes color, a new hidden message on Ben Franklin’s collar, and tiny 3-D images that move when you tilt the bill this way or that. But delay has followed delay. And now again: The New Yorker has learned that another production snafu has taken place at one of the country’s two currency factories, according to a document from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. 
  
 The cause of the latest blunder is something known as “mashing,” according to Darlene Anderson, a spokeswoman for the bureau. When too much ink is applied to the paper, the lines of the artwork aren’t as crisp as they should be, like when a kid tries to carefully color inside the lines—using watercolors and a fat paintbrush. 
  
 Anderson said this happens “infrequently.” Still, this foul-up is only the latest embarrassment for the bureau. The redesigned hundred-dollar bill was meant to be released in early 2011, but has been delayed for the past two years because of a massive printing error, separate from the recent mashing problem, in which some notes were left with a blank spot. 
  
 This time, recent batches of cash from the Washington, D.C., plant contained “clearly unacceptable” bills intermixed with passable ones, according to a July memo to employees from Larry Felix, the bureau’s director. So the Fed is returning more than thirty million hundred-dollar notes and demanding its money back, Felix wrote. Another thirty billion dollars’ worth of paper sits in limbo awaiting examination, and Fed officials have informed the bureau that they will not accept any hundred-dollar notes made at the Washington, D.C., facility until further notice. 
  
 Felix’s letter says internal quality-control measures should have prevented the bureau “from delivering defective work,” and that those responsible would be held accountable. The bureau now has to race to meet an October 8th deadline for delivering the year’s cash orders and to finally get the new hundred-dollar bill into circulation as promised. To that end, Felix has ordered the country’s other money factory, in Fort Worth, Texas, to accelerate its efforts. “There are dire consequences involved here because BEP sells Federal Reserve notes to the Board to finance our entire operation,” he wrote in the memo. “If the BEP does not meet the order, the BEP does not get paid.” 
  
 The financial toll from the recent bungle is tough to know: the Treasury and the Fed have little interest in calculating it, let alone being transparent about it. Still, the direct cost probably isn’t greater than the sum of what the bureau pumps out in a few days. “Central banks are a bit like other businesses,” said Ben Mazzotta, a researcher at the Fletcher School’s Institute for Business in the Global Context who focusses on the costs of different forms of money. “They can draw down inventories or order additional product.” 
  
 There are other costs, though. Taxpayers will have to pay to inspect, correct, produce, transport, and secure all the additional money that will replace the botched notes. Disposing of the bad bills? That’s on taxpayers, too, as are the additional hours spent making up for the mistake by employees of the bureau. 
  
 A possible greater cost of these scrip shenanigans is diminished confidence in the greenback. The situation is akin to a magician getting caught unloading a crate of bunnies from the back of his truck. It threatens to injure the aura—the almightiness—of the dollar that enables most people to go about their business without ever stopping to examine the bills in their hand or to contemplate what gives them value. The only thing conferring value on those dollars, of course, is trust in other people’s trust in them, which is both weird and magnificent. 
  
 David Wolman is a contributing editor at Wired. His latest book, “The End of Money: Counterfeiters, Preachers, Techies, Dreamers—and the Coming Cashless Society,” is out this month in paperback. 
  
 Photograph by Mark Wilson/Getty. |||||
Student:
The US is less than two months away from getting its new $100 bills—hopefully. The Oct. 8 release date is already more than two years behind schedule, a delay caused by production problems that apparently have not abated. Writing for the New Yorker, David Wolman reports that the Bureau of Engraving and Printing has hit yet another snag, per a memo from the bureau. The country has just two currency-printing facilities, and the Washington, DC, location has had a "mashing" issue, in which the application of too much ink led to what the New Yorker likens to a kid painting outside the lines. The affected bills are "clearly unacceptable" and internal quality checks apparently missed that. They were delivered to the Fed interspersed with ones that were printed just fine, and now the Fed is sending back some 30 million of them—and won't take any more from the DC location for now. In the meantime, bureau director Larry Felix has, with an eye on Oct. 8, asked the Fort Worth, Texas, facility to step things up. The Atlantic Wire does the math and calculates it that it's a $3.79 million blunder: The bills reportedly cost 12 cents apiece to produce (that's about $3.78 million), and it tacks on another $12,000 for destroying them. But Wolman sees "a possible greater cost," likening the situation to that of "a magician getting caught unloading a crate of bunnies from the back of his truck. It threatens to injure the aura—the almightiness—of the dollar." Click for more on the coming (fingers crossed) bills.