Good news, we're getting more efficient at sending out stimulus payments.
"As of January 15, the Bureau of Financial Services had disbursed over 133 million payments, ~90% of the total. Under the CARES Act, it took almost four months to distribute 90% of total payments."
Nick has an interesting theory about why banknotes replaced coins. Technology made coin counterfeiting easier, he says, so people fled into banknotes. Otherwise they would have stuck with coins.
Government policies—not innovations in counterfeiting—explain the prevalence of fakes. In the UK the Royal Mint refused to coin copper, so the supply of change was worn-out & easily counterfeited. It didn't hire foreigners or adopt new technology, so its work was shoddy. 2/4
Once it was adopted, technology cut down on fakes by providing mints with a new set of defences: