The US Federal Reserve has hit another snag in its effort to roll out a redesigned $100 bill. Having already been delayed multiple times by production issues, the new banknote was expected to finally enter circulation this October, but inspections by the Fed have uncovered a fresh printing issue. As The New Yorker reports, some of the new notes have received an excess of ink, rendering them "clearly unacceptable" in the judgment of Larry Felix, Director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP).

Because the imperfect currency is already intermixed with properly printed notes, the only solution has been to consign the full batch of 30 million bills to the incinerator and start over. If you're keeping count at home, that's a potential $3 billion worth of paper, but what's more, there's another $30 billion awaiting inspection, which could suffer a similar fate.

Further disclosures from an internal BEP memo seen by The New Yorker show that the October deadline is still possible to reach, though the Bureau will have to focus on production at its Fort Worth, Texas, facility since the Fed has informed it that it won't accept any more notes from the malfunctioning Washington, DC, plant.