![]() ![]() Their data also shows Americans are using physical cash less in daily purchases, and the amount being held by consumers still remains elevated when compared to before the pandemic. Economic and geopolitical uncertainty naturally causes unease, prompting many people to hold on to cash that they may not immediately try and spen, they concluded. Especially given that, as Covid-19 set in, businesses across the United States closed their customer-facing storefronts temporarily and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention discouraged the use of cash.īut demand for physical cash and actually paying with cash are two separate things, according to analysts at the San Francisco Fed. The White HouseĪ surge in demand for physical money amid a lockdown might not make sense at first glance. Grant, 18th President of the United States from 1869 to 1877. Professional gamblers and casinos reportedly don’t like to carry the bills, considering them a jinx and partially because Las Vegas casino investor and gangster Bugsy Siegel was rumored to have died with only $50s in his pocket.īut, more likely, and more realistically, people tend to avoid using $50 bills due to them being confused with $5 or $20 bills and many stores not accepting bills larger than $20. The effort got some support but ultimately went nowhere. (The $50 bill dates to 1862, but Grant’s face wasn’t added until 1914.)īack in 2010, North Carolina Republican Representative Patrick McHenry even attempted to introduce a measure into Congress to replace 18th President Grant with 40th President Ronald Reagan. Grant is on the face of the $50, and he notoriously went bankrupt, the bills are jinxed. There’s an old superstition that, because President Ulysses S. The US Mint produces coins.įew people really love the $50. Then, it orders the money from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the government agency that prints paper money. The Fed doesn’t print any physical money itself it estimates the anticipated demand for currency and the rate of decay of bills already in circulation. To understand why so many $50 bills were printed, it’s important to know how the system of printing money works. But for 20, the Fed ordered up more $50s than $10s and $5s. Until the pandemic, the $50 had been one of the rarest bills ordered for years, save for the $2 bill. ![]() So, the Fed ordered a big uptick in $50s. In July 2021, the Fed noted its “2022 print order is heavily influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic… the Federal Reserve continues to experience unprecedented demand for currency.”Ī subsequent report from the San Francisco Fed confirmed that, after 2020, Americans began to carry more cash in their wallets, cars, houses and elsewhere. ![]() Eccles Federal Reserve Building in Washington DC. And it’s easier to squirrel away bigger bills. People started hoarding cash, the Fed discovered. (Luckily, the rate at which inflation has grown slowed to 3.2% in October from its peak of 9.1% last June.) So why are you seeing more $50s? Surprisingly, it has nothing to do with inflation - even if it may sometimes feel these days like an item that used to cost $20 now costs $50. In 2022, that zoomed to 8.5%, according to the BEP. ![]() (More on that later.) In 2019, only 3.5% of all US bills printed were $50s. There are even multiple superstitions that it is unlucky. Usually, the $50 bill is an uncommon, somewhat unpopular, denomination. That’s enough to afford Taco Bell’s parent Yum Brands, Inc. $35.3 billion market cap. If you put all those $50s together, you’d have about $37.8 billion. Last year, the government printed 756,096,000 of those bills - the highest total of the denomination printed in one year in more than 40 years. Unless you’re an avid currency collector, an employee of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, or work at the Federal Reserve, you likely didn’t know that last year a record number of $50 bills were printed. ![]()
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