> "U.S currency is produced by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and U.S. coins are produced by the U.S. Mint. Both organizations are bureaus of the U.S. Department of the Treasury."
But even if this exhibit was at a U.S. Mint site, your assumption doesn't account for how the real world works. The people involved in planning, creating and operating a public exhibit space like this on behalf of some museum, department or company are just regular employees who report to mid-level managers with careers in facilities management. I'm not an expert but if this was a U.S. Mint site, I'd guess that the bills on display would be technically 'retired' (or whatever term they have for bills that are removed from circulation). Since the Federal Reserve is a quasi-governmental organization, I can't really guess if these bills are similarly retired or simply cash, the time-value of which this exhibit space is carrying on their balance sheet. Either way, based on the way the real world actually works, it's almost certain the cost of this cash is very precisely tracked and accounted for on an audited budget that some mid-level manager is responsible for balancing right alongside the payroll for ticket takers, security guards and janitorial.
If it's just diverting bills that were heading to be destroyed (not impossible looking at the end of the bills on the non strapped side they look pretty rough) they're not worth a million any more they're just scrap. If you were extra paranoid you could even partially destory the bills and leave only the outer edges needed for the display.
My wife works at the Fed, and I can confirm that 1) the Fed does decommission/retire bills and 2) that whole process is very tightly controlled. The retired bills are typically shredded, and if you go on a tour of a Fed bank, you can get little baggies of "Fed Shreds."
So it seems very likely to me that whatever money is in the cube is decommissioned.
That'd be fun, but I am pretty sure they get it electronically into their bank account — as in, no money is ever made for their salaries, just like most white collar workers.
As a side note: In some countries, central bank employees are the only individuals that can actually hold non-paper M0 (or MB?) money, since they get paid their salaries into a central bank account, which are otherwise only available to commercial banks. This used to be the case in Germany and Austria, but has been phased out at some point, as far as I remember.
But even if Fed employees just get paid in regular old M1 demand deposits, that's money nonetheless.
The Bank of England used to offer personal bank accounts to their employees, but they phased it out after 2015. Not sure if these accounts were exactly the same as those used for central banking though.
