Will the 'World's Worst Signature' Make It Onto New Dollar Bills?
Jack Lew, Obama's current chief of staff and his reported choice to replace Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary, is known for a lot of things – the New York Times says he's a "fiscal progressive" with "fiscal expertise" and a "low-key style," whatever any of that means – but that's not what we're here to discuss; instead let's talk about his signature, which will soon grace all new dollar bills.
As New York Magazine's Kevin Roose put it, Lew has the "world's worst signature." Judging from the photo above, Roose isn't far off; it's just a loopy scribble that looks like it was drawn by nervous child (or as NY Mag puts it: "a Slinky that has lost its spring"). The signature is so bad that in 2011, when Lew was director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, the Daily Mail caught wind of it and, being the world's premier journalists, hired a forensic handwriting expert to examine it.
Forensic handwriting analyst Sheila Lowe told MailOnline that a signature is 'the cover on the book' that reveals what a person shows to the world.
She said of Mr Lew's signature: 'He doesn't want us to see a lot about him.
'The soft roundedness of the letters show he can adapt quickly and make rapid changes, but he's also self-protective. He doesn't want people to see his private side.'
But before you get too excited about the loopy chicken scrawl making it onto new currency, it should be noted that Geithner, Lew's predecessor, altered his signature to make it more presentable, and his wasn't half as terrible as Lew's. Let's hope Lew stays true to his gibberish handwriting roots because, in addition to paper money, it would look great on a trillion dollar coin.
