Quick thread on why our money doesn’t make sense anymore.
Before 1933, the US adhered to a gold standard. This meant that individuals could take their gold, deposit it at a bank, and receive a paper note that they could later redeem at the bank for the corresponding amount of gold.
Paper notes served as a method to abstract the value of gold into a form that is easier to transport and divide into smaller denominations for trade. No one wanted to carry around a bunch of gold bars or coins.
Even the coins were worth more than was useful for daily transactions. That's why silver was used as coinage because silver coins were small enough to facilitate daily trades. With the advent of paper currency, silver was no longer needed since we can assume the paper is worth the same as gold.
Then comes the Great Depression. In 1933, to stimulate a weak economy, FDR enacted Executive Order 6102, which forced all Americans to turn in their gold to the government. Yes, owning physical gold was illegal in America from 1933 to 1974. What this allowed the government to do was to collect the vast majority of the gold and pay the citizens around $20/oz for that gold. Now the banks have all the gold, and the people were given paper promises that their dollars will be worth that amount of gold in the future.
Bait and switch time. Shortly after collecting all the gold, they changed the exchange rate from $20/oz to $36/oz, effectively devaluing everyone’s money and making them poorer. Every time there is a war, it is very expensive. The US previously had to issue new types of fiat currencies to fund their war efforts (Continentals during the Revolutionary War and Greenbacks/Confederate State dollars during the Civil War).
Now that the US has all the gold, when WW2 rolls around, instead of having to issue a new currency to pay for the war, they could just issue more paper claims for gold than actual gold exists (fractional reserve banking). When the US declared victory in WW2, they seized all the gold from around the world and put it in Fort Knox. The Bretton Woods Agreement was reached in 1944. This agreement stated that the US dollar would be pegged to the value of gold, and all other foreign currencies would be pegged to the dollar. This gave us the license to do to other countries what we did to our own citizens - print more paper promises for gold than actual gold existed. Fast forward to around the 1970s at the peak of the Vietnam War. Remember that war is expensive, and we have been printing dollars to fund the war. Printing more dollars than gold to back it up. Concerned with the amount of our debt other countries began requesting to redeem their dollars in exchange for their gold back.
This ushered in the Nixon Shock of 1971 where he announced that the US would end the redeem-ability of dollars for gold. This brought about our current fiat monetary system.
Fiat money gives the government the ability to issue paper money with nothing to back up its value. Just a promise that $1 = $1. The problem is that the purchasing power of that dollar has deflated by 99% over the past 100 years. They have siphoned off 99% of the purchasing power of the citizens and transferred it to the people who can print at no cost. They can use this newly created money to fund endless wars because it has no real cost to them. They can print infinitely until all value from the populace has been extracted—a silent tax that you have no vote in.
Look at any chart that shows how crazy things have gotten since the US went off a hard-money (gold) standard. We’ve gone from a family being able to have 1 working parent, a stay-at-home parent, multiple kids, a house, etc. Now that all of the value has been sucked out of our money, many parents today must work at least one or multiple jobs, purposely choose to have fewer kids, are in insurmountable debt, and have no hopes of ever being able to afford a house.
This 50-year fiat money experiment has been a disaster and is only getting worse. Interest rates are at 5.25%. We currently have around $34 trillion—that’s 34 with 12 zeros behind it—$34,000,000,000,000 in debt. We can never pay that debt, so we have to continue to roll it over at the new interest rates. Once the debt has to roll over in 2 years, we will owe almost $1.8 trillion in annual interest expenses. This is paid from tax receipts. The US brings in a little less than $5 trillion each year. So we have to pay the interest + defense spending + entitlements (social security, Medicaid, Medicare). Biden proposes $2.6 trillion in new entitlement spending. So let’s add that up - 1.8+0.8+2.6=5.2. $5.2 trillion the US will need to spend in 2 years, assuming that we don’t add to the national debt (We will. Currently running almost $2 trillion deficit each year), don’t increase the military budget (2 proxy wars currently with no end in sight), and don’t spend any money on infrastructure, education, special interests, etc (election year approaching. Lots of spending promises will be made).
If the US were a company, it would be bankrupt. And we have the strongest of the fiat currencies. This is going to end badly. There will be many currency hyperinflations in other countries before the US, but all fiat currencies fail over time. Pay attention. Be prepared. Protect yourself and your family. They are trying to trap you in the current system because they cannot extract your value without you still in it. You are on the Titanic and they are trying to burn the life boats.