Stretching your money

As if there aren’t enough reasons to avoid stretchy jeans, here’s another: They contaminate the money supply .

US currency is made from cotton, much of it from denim. During the 1990s, though, spandex was added to jeans, and the denim scraps used for money were tainted: “Even a single fiber of spandex can ruin a batch of currency paper, degrading the strength of the material. But separating the spandex from the cotton would be a Herculean task . . . By the early 2000s, almost every pair of jeans contained at least a hint of stretch.”

So give up your skinny jeans, if not for reasons of taste, do it for the economy. Do it for the children.