A recent comment came in and asked the provocative question that is the title to this post. At first I thought that it was quite funny, but after a moment the humor was lost and the answer intrigued me. After a few web searches I found the following site, through the U.S. Treasury. In the production facts at the bottom of the information was this little comment from the Department of the Treasury, ” 95% of the notes printed each year are used to replace notes already in, or taken out of circulation.”

So I decided that I would do a little math. According to the US Department of the Treasury information in the Fiscal Year 1980, the Treasury printed paper money totaling a little over $35 Billion in paper notes of various denominations. Taking my trusty 12C calculator out and doing some quick calculations it would seem that there would be nearly $57 Billion in paper notes of various denominations by FY 1990, and $93 Billion in paper notes of various denominations printed by the U.S. Treasury by the year 2000. Inquisitive as I am, and not having a lot to do on a Wednesday evening, I asked my trusty 12C to calculate the potential printed note value for the year 2009. It provided me with a total of $144.3 Billion. So just to make sure that the U.S. Treasury wasn’t much off their mark, I found out that in 2009 the U.S. Treasury issued $223.5 Billion in paper notes of various denominations.

Being an educated person, I proffered that the difference had to be an inflationary effect that the economy has burdened the printing presses of the U.S. Treasury with meeting over the past 29 years.

But if that is the missing link, then please explain the following:

• 2004        515,200,000 $100 bills printed
• 2005        668,800,000 $100 bills printed
• 2006        950,400,000 $100 bills printed
• 2007     1,088,000,000 $100 bills printed
• 2008     1,209,600,000  $100 bills printed
• 2009     1,785,600,000  $100 bills printed

So when someone asks you how much cash the U.S. Treasury usually prints, tell them…….as much as it wants.