U.S. government hits snag printing new $100 bills, prints old ones instead

The U.S. Treasury Department may have been eager to open the doors to its money printing factory back in July to show off its brand new $100 bills, but it looks to be a decidedly different story today. As CNBC reports, all of the added security measures have apparently been harder to print than expected, and have resulted in a creasing problem that has left some bills with a blank portion on the face. The real problem, however, is that it's not clear how many bills have the flaw, which has forced the department to "quarantine" some 1.1 billion bills until they can be sorted -- one person familiar with the matter says as many as 30 percent were affected at the height of the problem. As you might expect, that accounts for a pretty big chunk of the bills intended for circulation, which has forced the fed to print some more of the older $100 bills that still feature Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson's signature in the meantime.