SuperNote - SuperVote

Splashed on the front pages of McClatchy Newspapers this Saturday was the SuperNote story Fake $100 bills have features just like the real ones. There is also a time line at The history of the supernotes. Supernotes are:

To the untrained eye, the supernotes look just like the real thing. McClatchy tested its supernote on waiters, journalists, average folks and currency experts, and it was virtually impossible for any of them to distinguish it from a real $100 bill.

Both stories linked-to above are very interesting. It would be best to peruse them before continuing.

The point I'd like to make here is that one highly possible source is NOT mentioned at all. That is the company, De La Rue, based in London, that prints most of the rest of the world's paper money. Don't take my word for it. This is from their website:

As the world's largest commercial currency printer and papermaker, De La Rue Currency is involved in the production of more than 150 currencies.

De La Rue Currency provides market-leading banknote paper, printed banknotes and an unparalleled portfolio of banknote security features, including cylinder mould watermarks, security threads, a wide range of printed features and sophisticated optically-variable devices.

That being said, what does that have to do with SuperVote? Well, last year, in this commentary, it was pointed out that shortly after 9/11:

De La Rue, the World Leader in Tamperproof Government Documents and Secure Cash Processing Technologies, Acquires 85% of Sequoia Voting Systems, the Leading U.S. Touch Screen Voting Firm Business Wire, May 29, 2002. (More . . .)

Even more interesting was the bragging about Ohio within the press release:

Sequoia has installed more than 35,000 Direct Record Electronic (DRE) full face and touch screen voting machines in 16 states. The latest U.S. election using Sequoia's touch screen machines place in Lucas County, Ohio, where Sequoia managed a successful special election with only three weeks of preparation time. The Ohio election, which used both lever and touch screen machines, was the fastest implementation of touch screen voting in U.S. history.

This was followed by:

A New President is Appointed to Lead One of the Nation’s Largest Voting Systems Companies as the Industry Prepares to Compete for $3.86 Billion Federal Election Reform Dollars - 2002-12-02.

Unfortunately, this information is no longer available on the Sequoia website.

Interestingly enough, De La Rue unloaded Sequoia a few years later. Here's more information:

In the early 1980s, Sequoia was sold to the Irish printing conglomerate Jefferson Smurfit, which sold it to De La Rue, a British banking technology and currency printing house. Sequoia lost money in 2004 and De La Rue sold it to Smartmatic Co. of Boca Raton for $16 million in cash. Smartmatic in turn is owned by holding companies based in the Netherlands and Curacao. The lead investors are four founders, led by Antonio Mugica and his father, who have Spanish and Venezualan citizenship.

Supernotes and Supervotes. It doesn't seem too far fetched to tie London into our problems. Heck, they even have a controlling interesting in Diebold. That was shown in an earlier summary, too.

It wouldn't be the first time, as noted here:

Rampant inflation set in as the bills' value plummeted at exactly the time the fledgling government needed resources. George Washington wrote in a letter to John Jay that "a wagon-load of money will scarcely purchase a wagon-load of provisions." It didn't help matters when, in January 1776, the British government began undermining American independence by attacking the American economy: it turned out great quantities of sham American money, advertising in New York's Tory newspapers that "Persons going into other Colonies may be supplied with any Number of counterfeit Congress-Notes, for the Price of the Paper per Ream." Josiah Bartlett said it was a "most diabolical scheme to ruin the paper currency by counterfeiting it," noting that the fakes were "so neatly done that it is extremely difficult to discover the difference."

Not much more to say. Sometimes The Dragon Wins

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© 2008 by Edward Ulysses Cate
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