• Check 21

Check 21 is designed to foster innovation in the payments system and to enhance its efficiency by reducing some of the legal impediments to check processing, which should make check processing faster and more efficient.

Instead of physically moving paper checks from one bank to another, Check 21 will allow banks to process more checks electronically. Banks can capture a picture of the front and back of the check along with the associated payment information and transmit this information electronically.

The speed of check-processing already has increased in response to check-system improvements other than Check 21. Even now, once a check is deposited with a bank, it is almost always delivered overnight to the paying bank and debited from the checkwriter's account the next business day. Check- processing speeds should continue to increase, over time, as banks make further operational changes in response to Check 21. That means money may be deducted from your checking account faster. Before you write a check, it's always best to make sure your checking account has enough money in it to cover the check.

Another federal check law (the Expedited Funds Availability Act) specifies the maximum times by which your bank must make funds available to you, though most banks make funds available faster than required. Check 21 did not change these maximum hold times. However, the Expedited Funds Availability Act requires the Federal Reserve Board to reduce maximum hold times in step with reductions in actual check-processing times. Thus, over the longer term, if Check 21 sufficiently increases the speed of check processing, the Board will reduce maximum hold times.

A little more about Albert
Albert Einstein was born at Ulm, in Württemberg, Germany, on March 14, 1879. Six weeks later the family moved to Munich and he began his schooling there at the Luitpold Gymnasium. Later, they moved to Italy and Albert continued his education at Aarau, Switzerland and in 1896 he entered the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School in Zurich to be trained as a teacher in physics and mathematics. In 1901, the year he gained his diploma, he acquired Swiss citizenship and, as he was unable to find a teaching post, he accepted a position as technical assistant in the Swiss Patent Office. In 1905 he obtained his doctor's degree. During his stay at the Patent Office, and in his spare time, he produced much of his remarkable work.

With the rise of fascism in Germany, Einstein moved (1933) to the United States and abandoned his pacifism. He reluctantly agreed that the new menace had to be put down through force of arms. In this context Einstein sent (1939) a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that urged that the United States proceed to develop an atomic bomb before Germany did. The letter, composed by Einstein's friend Leo Szilard, was one of many exchanged between the White House and Einstein, and it contributed to Roosevelt's decision to fund what became the Manhattan Project.

After World War II, Einstein was a leading figure in the World Government Movement, he was offered the Presidency of the State of Israel, which he declined, and he collaborated with Dr. Chaim Weizmann in establishing the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

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