IT'S A BRAND-NEW CENTURY

THE C-NOTE, AS IT USED TO BE CALLED in Raymond Chandler novels, will never be the same. To frustrate counterfeiters, the Treasury Department has given the $100 bill a complete overhaul, and will begin releasing the new currency in a matter of weeks. Treasury spent nearly 10 years on the redesign and has added any number of state-of-the-art features: microprinting, color-shifting ink, a polymer security thread. The most striking alteration, however, is the enlargement of Benjamin Franklin's portrait: he now dominates the bill like a movie star in a newspaper advertisement.

The money we carry around is so familiar that whenever...