Loveland resident Daniel Carr's work is exceptionally beautiful.

A designer of collectible coins, he's the man behind the official New York and Rhode Island state quarter designs for the United States.

Sadly, some people are taking Carr's entire oeuvre a bit too seriously. They should not.

Not long ago, Carr, who also casts funny and gimmicky coins, came up with a bright idea. He fashioned a collectible coin based on an imaginary currency called the "amero" - a mix of "America" and "dinero." It is something analogous to the European euro. Analogous but fake. Carr's denominations range from 20 to 1,000.

The fact that this currency doesn't, you know, actually exist hasn't stopped a crush of orders from coming in or paranoia from erupting.

Scores of people who believe evil globalists, government officials and "multinational" corporate heads are working in implausible secrecy and cooperation to hand over our sovereignty to a shadowy "North American Union" were quick to jump on the amero as proof of a scheme afoot.

"I had started to read reports about the discussion regarding the government going to a union between all the countries in North America," Carr tells me. "The amero would be modeled on the common European currency. My first thought was not that this is not so much a political statement rather than just an interesting issue."

I find the idea of a North American Union, as I do most conspiracy theories, pure baloney. How could all these enormous institutions have the ability to work in precise cohesion to control the entire continental economy when the government can't even figure out how to plow the snow on my street?

Carr, a Denver native who earned a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Colorado in 1982, says he's not exceptionally political, though he likes to "spark discussions." This discussion, however, has surprised him.

"It wasn't more than a day after I had posted the amero when a talk-radio show host took my image without my permission. He said, 'Look! We've exposed government leaders who are about to betray us, and here is proof in the amero!' I e-mailed this person and told him that he didn't have permission to use the image, and it wasn't real, anyway. But he never responded."

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