05-22-2016, 01:23 AM
(05-22-2016, 12:28 AM)Galen Wrote:(05-21-2016, 08:38 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:(05-21-2016, 08:11 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: You missed the irony.
Probably because you've confused irony with idiocy. Every fiat currency has ultimately failed.
As near as I can tell the half-life of any fiat currency seems to be about twenty-five years. The US has been doing this since 1971 and the dollar has been propped up by the Cold War and the petrodollar system. In order to figure out how long the dollar is going to last it is necessary to ask a different question: How long does the petrodollar system have left?
The backing of any currency is what one can buy with it, whether it is oil, steel, wheat, electrical power, motion pictures, porcelain, or weapons. Gold is arbitrary, fitting certain values well and others badly. South Korean currency is valuable. North Korean currency is worthless. That has nothing to do with gold reserves.
The US dollar as a fiat currency has done adequately on the whole -- but better as people got used to it. Within ten years America got near-zero inflation.
Petrodollars? Those have themselves been shaky, depending heavily upon the price of oil. Cold War? It's over.
There is no magic in gold. Bismuth would do just as well.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.