$250 Bill requested ??

Not entirely unprecedented in a sense; Calvin Coolidge was on a commemorative coin in 1926 for the US's 150th anniversary, while still alive and still the current president. (From what I understand he wasn't too fond of the idea, but eventually have in. The designer wanted George Washington and also the current president at the time on the coin.) Though that was a commemorative and not intended to be spent. A lot of people felt similarly when $2 bills were re-introduced in 1976; treated as a commemorative souvenir rather than something to actually use, why to this day $2 bills aren't used frequently.

Still though it's an unusual denomination and making change for it would require retailers to keep more cash on hand. Having a denomination higher than $100 again may make sense, just not so sure about $250 specifically. I know why they want that denomination, so it can come out during the 250th anniversary of the country next year, but how long would it be a particularly useful denomination? Honestly something more like $200 would probably make more sense.

I think it's a long shot that this would actually go through. It would be a tough sell for an unusual denomination it's hard to argue a need for; could be a repeat of the 20 cent piece.

Of course I'm going to want to save one for my collection if it does go through. I think a lot of people would.

 

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I work a retail job and we get $100 bills very frequently; a lot of contractors have to make large purchases of materials and supplies, and there's still people who don't trust banks and prefer to use cash. Granted, most people pay with cards but I've never had a day where we didn't get some $100s. The use of cash is going down but I don't think it will entirely go away in my lifetime.

$250 specifically seems a weird denomination but bringing back some denomination over $100 does make some practical sense, more so now than when they chose to discontinue them.

 

Probably...I'd rather see a $500 bill with Reagan on it. We can get a jump on the Quintcentenniel.

But I am sure it would be hoarded and used extensively for gifts (weddings, birthdays, Bar Mitzvahs, etc.).

The $100,000 bill was never circulated, it was only intended for bank-to-bank transfers and I'm not even sure it was actually used.

The others DID get used in some fashion, even the $5,000 and $10,000, though as you can imagine super sparingly.

A $500 bill, when it was printed, represented either an entire year's wages (late-1800's) or a few months of wages (1900's). Only the super-wealthy could really utilize or hold one.

By discontinuing.....banks were told to yank them out of circulation when they appeared.

Larger bills are the ones targeted by counterfeiters. Not sure if the new security measures have cut down on the ability to counterfeit but IF they have...that might crack open the door a bit to justify a bill larger than $100.

It would be interesting to see how a brand new $500 bill (or $250 bill, though I doubt that one materializes) would be treated by the public.

 

Well, we have quarter-dollars, and we had quarter-eagles. There was never (AFAIK) any plan for a $25 quarter-Union, but it's certainly past time to consider $1000 a unit of counting. I've got some ideas for what to call the $1000 unit, but, you know, politics.

So... quarter-grand? A camel's nose under the tent, to bring back the half-grand ($500) and grand ($1000) notes?

 

And yet, some people like to pay cash for everything.

CNBC's long-time contributor, Art Cashin (of UBS and PaineWebber) was one such person. Did not have a credit card apparently.

 

Bingo, I don't have a credit card, and I don't use my bank for anything but cashing checks. Guess what I have never had my identity stolen either.

 

Never been a fan of any argument that law abiding people should be inconvenienced to curtail the action of criminals, that by their very nature, are disinclined to follow the law anyway. Besides there have been counterfeit Sacagaweas and one person even famously counterfeited nickels. Not every criminal is especially ambitious (or especially brilliant either: there's a story of someone that tried to spend counterfeit $13 bills at a Wal-Mart; the cashier, for some reason, suspected their authenticity lol).

You can't ever stop everyone determined to break the law from doing so, but there are plenty of security features already in place to make it hard for them so at least counterfeits can be detected by most people paying a reasonable amount of attention. The place where I work at we've found a few counterfeits that weren't particularly difficult to detect (company policy though we're not allowed to refuse them, for the same reason we're not allowed to confront suspected thieves: safety issue since you never know how someone confronted will react, and when you do so you're not the only one you're putting at risk. But we're still expected to report suspicious bills once the person that paid with them is out of sight). I imagine in the unlikely event this bill is produced (or some other over $100 bill) it will have the best security features we can come up with, ones that probably will show up on the lower denomination bills too.