With the economy mired in a prolonged, painful recession that has proved stubbornly resistant to traditional methods of government intervention, our money seems less valuable than ever. Just yesterday, in fact, the dollar plunged to its lowest level yet this year against the Euro. One can hardly blame our friends across the Atlantic for abandoning our currency. Have you seen what’s on it? A bunch of old dead guys. Yuck!
Americans, the time has come for a bold new solution to our economic crisis, one that will both stimulate our moribund economy and revive our beleaguered currency. In the interest of restoring our good name with the nations of the world and shifting the balance of trade, I propose that we redesign our paper money with an eye toward exploiting our most valuable export: celebrities.
Here are some preliminary designs for the new American currency:
$100 — Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie
Essentially America’s equivalent of royalty, Pitt and Jolie already serve as unofficial envoys to Africa and the Far East, scooping up children and leaving behind a trail of goodwill wherever they go. It’s only fitting that they should be emblazoned on our most valuable piece of currency.
$20 — Johnny Depp
Depp is now a full-time resident of Paris, where he lives with his girlfriend Vanessa Paradis and their two children. Slapping the Alice in Wonderland star’s handsome face on the $20 bill would go a long way toward healing our strained relations with France — and with the European continent at large, where Depp’s nuanced portrayals of wild-eyed eccentrics are especially popular.
$5 — Megan Fox
Abraham Lincoln may have made an invaluable contribution to our country, but I think we can all agree that he ain’t much to look at. Replacing his somber visage on the $5 bill with that of the saucy star of Transformers and Jennifer’s Body will have young men around the world scrambling to get their hands on our greenbacks.
$3 — Will Smith, Tom Cruise and Vin Diesel
It’s time to replace the little-used $2 bill with something better — one better, to be precise. The new three-dollar bill will feature a trio of our most charismatic action-movie stars, diverse symbols of America’s rugged, pioneering spirit.
$1 — Robert Pattinson
Sure, Pattinson was born in the UK, but it was America’s mighty media-entertainment complex that made him into a superstar. The pasty-faced star of Twilight and its forthcoming sequel, New Moon, is already ubiquitous in the pages of OK!, Us Weekly and various other gossip rags, and approximately 80 percent* of all entertainment websites subsist on the traffic he generates. So it makes perfect sense to showcase his pouty mug on our most plentiful piece of paper money.
Soon our currency will not be referred to as the dollar, but rather as the Pattinson — or Patt, for short. As in, “I can’t believe they’re charging 30 Pattinsons for a lap-dance,” or, “My deadbeat ex-husband was 500 Patts short on his last child-support payment.” As a bonus, tween girls around the world will almost immediately discover the value of saving money.
America, the time to act to save our economy is now. Please call your local member of Congress and ask them to support the Celebrity Currency Redesign Act of 2009.
* A completely fabricated figure.
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