Step taken to new paper money issue

Signatures on the upcoming new series of U.S. Federal Reserve Notes will be of Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin paired with that of Jovita Carranza as United States Treasurer.

This hinges on confirmation of Carranza by the U.S. Senate.

She was nominated by President Donald Trump on Friday.

Her background is solid and not caught up in any current political controversies.

That is an indicator of a routine confirmation, but not a guarantee.

Wikipedia says she was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in her last political appointment.

She served the George W. Bush administration as deputy administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration.

She was in office starting in December 2006 and then left in January 2009 when the administration of Barack Obama arrived.

Now in the private section, Carranza runs a consulting firm, The JCR Group.

She is a native of the city of Chicago.

Her first job with UPS was as a part-time, night-shift box handler in the 1970s.

She left UPS as vice president of air operations in Louisville, Ky.

She earned her Masters of Business Administration degree from Florida’s University of Miami.

The two new signatures mean that the next paper money series date will be 2017.

The current one is 2013, the year that Jacob J. “Jack” Lew was paired with Rosa Gumataotao “Rosie” Rios.

Rios left office in July of last year and Lew departed in January.

Signature use on paper money is a holdover from the days when notes resembled checks with notations of paying the bearer on demand.

Now signatures are just a tradition as current notes simply declare, “This Note Is Legal Tender for All Debts, Public and Private.

During the Civil War paper money signatures on notes issued by both the North and South were written by hand.

Nowadays, they are placed on the printing plates and the signature facsimiles on notes come off the presses by the billions.

Buzz blogger Dave Harper has twice won the Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog and is editor of the weekly newspaper "Numismatic News."

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