On Sat, 5 Dec 1998, Mary Krugman wrote:

> You don't need the article. By looking at the new twenty it is clear that
> all the features that once were held in place as coordinated elements of a
> "classic" design, have become unhinged and no longer are tied to any formal
> or tectonic structure.  The portrait oval floats in an unnatural space in
> front of the bill; the face pops out of its frame and seems to revel in its
> engraved design.  The numbers, except for a huge inelegant sanserif 20 on
> the reverse, are not clear and seem to be deliberately confusing; they now
> appear as dark indistinguishable presences where once they were transparent
> white.  The engraved design, too, contrasting with unprinted fields of bare
> paper, finds no resting place on the surface -- a field on which it does
> battle. In short, the new design is mannerist.  And perhaps this unsettling
> design is meant, at long last, to imply the unstable foundation of our
> currency.

I don't like the new $20 either.

Incidentally, it is hugely ironic that we have placed a portrait of Andrew
Jackson -- an implacable foe of paper money -- on one of our most widely
circulated bills.

                           Larry Kestenbaum