BTW – “fiat” means that the money is worth something only because the government says so – not because it is backed by any real assets – which is currently the case for ALL currencies in the world today.

There have been proposals – in Mexico to reinstate the use of silver coin, and in Indonesia to mint a gold Dinar and use it as currency, but apart from those the only precious metal coins minted are not used directly as money even if they have a face-value, because the face value is so far below the current spot price for the metal.

The thinking from the contrarian financial experts right now is that the US dollar is being intentionally devalued – which will affect foreign governments who hold US dollar denominated investments such as treasury bills etc. This in turn will affect foreign currencies in a similar manner – devaluation. This is much bigger than political survival of the governmet – it is survival of the People at issue.

I would recomment to buy things of lasting value and utility while your money is still worth something – clothing, non-perishable food, tools, non Genetically-modified seeds, generators & fuel, and precious metals (not “paper gold or paper silver” but the real stuff if you can find it).

If you do manage to buy some BTW, do NOT keep it in a safe-deposit box in a financial institution – buy your own safe and bolt it down securely. Regulations allow Homeland Security to prevent people from withdrawing money, precious metals and firearms from safe-deposit in an emergency.

arguably, the US did it beginning in 1966 or so.

except that it ended with the election of Ronald Reagan, who surely wasn’t what the in power team of 1966 [the Democrats] wanted.

WW2 ended in 1945 and a huge number of babies were born in 1946. This was the beginning of the baby boom — a cohort of people much larger in numbers than the preceding generation.

in 1966, baby boomers were 20 and just beginning to leave home in numbers and demand housing. by 1968, the leading edge of the baby boom was 22 and most were at work — and wanted somewhere to live away from mom and dad.

this demand in housing caused a problem because the housing industry can’t effectively expand the housing stock faster than about 1.5% per year.

so added demand causes prices to go up because of inability to build houses that fast.

the government was in a pickle — if they held the money supply and inflation steady, housing prices would still go up, but prices of other things would have to go down to compensate — and that included union wages and unionized industries.

so our government embarked on a program to intentionally cause inflation for a few years while the housing industry built enough homes to meet the resulting demand.

it took until about 1976 [a decade] to do this, after which inflation fell back to more normal levels quite quickly.