Geldmacher: Das Geheimste Gewerbe Der Welt - Hardcover

This book is about the most precious "piece of paper" we know, about banknotes and about the industry that makes them. We have banknotes in our hands daily. Modern life would be unthinkable without them, yet we know nothing about how they are made or who makes them. This secrecy is regularly explained as "legitimate" special security for a very special product. But it also has to do with the unusual, highly politicized structure of the market in which central banks, as well as state and private banknote printers, operate. The armaments industry immediately comes to mind. This obsession with secrecy, however, seems out of place in the era of the internet. After all, banknote printing involves the massive use -- and often waste -- of taxpayers' money. This is the first book offering an in--depth view of the banknote industry and its modus operandi. The only known former attempt to reveal this story was by an American author (Terry Bloom: The Brotherhood of Money. The Secret World of Banknote Printers, BNR Press, Port Clinton, Ohio 1983). The edition of that book was bought up -- straight from the printing presses -- by two prominent Swiss representatives of the industry because the public was not supposed to get an inside view of the business. Today Bloom's book is hard to find even at dealers specialized in old books. An American dealer in 2002 had one copy on offer for 150 Dollars. MONEYMAKERS has been researched over a five--year period in Europe, the USA and Latin America. The book is based exclusively on personal interviews and confidential material normally not accessible to outsiders. There were attempts to stop this research project. Many witnesses interviewed spoke under condition of strict confidentiality for fear of reprisals by their employers. As a rule therefore, the author refrained from verbatim quotes and, as far as possible, tried to confirm every piece of information by two independent sources.

KLAUS W. BENDER is an economist and journalist with 30 years experience as a foreign correspondent for the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" (FAZ), Germany's leading daily paper. From an office in Tokyo, he has covered East Asia; from Rome, the Mediterranean basin; from Vienna, the Eastern European countries in transition. Further, in the run-up to the birth of the euro, since the 1990-s he has been investigating the situation of the banknote industry and its problems. As a result, in the year 2000 he discovered and broke the story of the misprinting of more than 300 million 100-euro bills by the officially appointed printer in Germany. The story went around the world and resulted in five broadcasts in one single day with the author on British networks (including the BBC). Additionally, he was the first journalist to report on the unfolding economic difficulties of the Bundesdruckerei in Berlin, the then highly respected state printing plant of the DM bills, as it was about to be privatized.