Klaus W. Bender is a German financial journalist and author, best known for writing the book Moneymakers: The Secret World of Banknote Printing. Early life He was born in 1938 in Darmstadt, county of Hesse. Bender studied economics at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and, later, at University of Cologne, financing his entire studies by working as a factory hand and office clerk. After graduation in 1964, with an MA in business administration, he immediately joined the research institute of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FESt), one of the largest German political foundations, which in 1966 dispatched him to its newly opened regional office in Tokyo, Japan. Career Germany In 1970, Bender left FESt in order to become a journalist, a move he had planned for a long time. Initially, he reported from Tokyo on Japanese economic affairs as a freelance journalist for about 20 German and Swiss newspapers but soon was hired by Der Spiegel, Germany's most prominent weekly magazine, and simultaneously by Handelsblatt, one of Germany's leading economic dailies, as a freelance (economic) writer with a fixed retainer fee. In 1972, upon invitation from the board of publishers, Bender joined Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Germany's leading daily (conservative) paper. He now reported on an exclusive basis for FAZ on politics, economics, and culture in the Asian region. Assignments by FAZ sent him to all countries of East and Southeast Asia, with the exception of war-torn Indochina. Highlights were trips to mainland China (repeatedly), to North Korea, and to the Soviet Far East. All at that time were regions still closed to visitors from the West. Italy After 14 years in Japan, Bender in 1980 asked for a transfer back to Europe. He was reassigned as economics correspondent of FAZ in Rome, covering Italy and selected countries around the Mediterranean Basin. Although Bender considered the years passed in Italy as particularly happy and enriching, the fall of the Wall in Berlin induced him to ask in 1992, for a transfer to Eastern Europe. As economics correspondent of FAZ for Eastern and Southeastern Europe, he now accompanied the countries in the Prague-Bucharest-Belgrade triangle on their painful road of transition from Soviet oppression to a free market system and parliamentary democracy. Misprint of euro In the year 2000 Bender asked to be relieved of his duties as a full-time reporter in order to have more time for writing a non-fiction book about the arcane