Ugh, passing the yuck along with the buck

Money, Thornton Wilder observed, is like manure, in that it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around and helps young things to grow. However, it seems that a lot of money is also like manure in that handling either of them can get our hands mucky. At the recent Ig Nobel award ceremony — an annual event that celebrates tongue-in-cheeky scientific achievements, which this year showcased a diaper-changing machine and a thesis which claimed that eating Italian pizza is a cancer preventive — the first prize was won by a study which established that the dirtiest currency, in the literal sense of the term, is the Romanian leu, followed by the Greek and Italian euros. Also featuring on the list of truly filthy lucre are the US and the Canadian dollars, and the Indian rupee, though not the Pakistani or Nepali variants of the same name.

The Romanian delegation at the function is said to have been far from displeased at being bestowed the dubious distinction of having the world’s most disgusting dough, rife with no less than three types of drug-resistant bacteria, among other grungy elements that give a new colouration to the term ‘black money’. It’s not known if Romania’s central bank will be moved to clean up its currency’s act, even at the risk of inviting the pun-itive charge of being guilty of the fiscal grime of money laundering.