Average life of a fiat currency throughout history is 40 years. Coming off the gold standard was the single biggest fiscal mistake the USA made which is why we are where we are today. Notice in the chart, USD priced in gold. Look at 1971 till now.
The past 40 years of American prosperity has been at the expense of the rest of the world. Our credit card bill arrived in the mail today. We are contemplating whether to open a new credit card account for the 70th time. Should we open another credit card account or go to the bankruptcy office and face the music? It's the American way to just open another account and go to the mall right? Money=Gold for thousands of years, why fix what wasn't broken. In our current structure Money =Debt ....this has never stood the test of time throughout history.
Fiat currency is just more sophisticated way of transferring the wealth from one population group to another. By sophisticated, I mean, the group from which the wealth is being transferred from doesn't have a clue. Just the means to an end that has been accomplished through coercion throughout the ages.
The downslope coincides with the US inability to supply its own energy needs. I don't believe that is a coincidence. If the gold standard or something roughly equivalent had been kept, we would simply be dealing with another set of serious problems. In the end, nothing much would be different.
More likely US is perfectly capable of meeting own needs with its own energy sources, it's simply unwilling to do that at the prices the public is used to.
You can try to assert that, but it's simply not true. Under any honest money system, there's no way we'd have similar problems. Energy is a different can of worms. An emphasis on thorium-based nuclear, open drilling and more refineries (they've been crippled with age and regulations) and nat gas would yield a completely different picture than we have now.
That will not happen without a complete debt default and that won't happen without a revolution. How would we ever pay out bills if we couldn't deflate our way out of it? There is simply too much money being made by people manipulating the currency.
Please inform me what happened. When Nixon took the gold standard off, was it because of the political world pressuring the U.S.? I talked to an older friend and said the U.S. shouldn't have gone off the gold standard and he said the U.S. had no choice as the other countries forced the issue. Was there simply no other choice? or could have Nixon refused? Or did the Fed Reserve want it done? Thanks.