Don't worry, folks will be along shortly to assure us that "It's different this time."
Of course, they can never give an historical example of ever-expanding fiat money systems coming to a good end.
Boy, you're gonna' stir up some people with this. People are afraid to look at this stuff cause there ain't much warm and fuzzy there.
As I'm sure you know this fiat system is backed by the "full faith and credit of the American public"......sounds good but are they telling us in a roundabout way that everything we think we own is the collateral for this incomprehensible amount of debt?
Unless the money supply can expand at the rate the economy is expanding it will produce deflation which cripples the economy. This is the reason gold and silver are no longer monetary instruments. Governments are not going to allow the economy to collapse and face rebellious citizens.
Gold and silver expand at a rate less than two percent per yr. (for the last 500 yrs. including the looting of the New World's metals by the Spanish) while our long term economic growth rate is a little over 3 per cent. Thus without the advent of credit and paper money we would not have grown as much as we have in the last hundred years.
It is also instructive to examine the origins of the Federal Reserve system. Bankers in the Money Centers fought the idea for decades believing they could handle the periodic financial panics. They did not care that it was the banks and the people in the hinterlands which suffered most during these panics as their money was drawn away to the Money Centers. Let the farmers go bankrupt.
But after the Panic of 1907 it became clear that without a financial giant of the stature of JP Morgan such panics could not be staved off and something else had to be done.
Then the financial class joined forces with the Populists and Progressives to come up with the Federal Reserve and its system of regional banks to assure that the money would not be drawn off to the East as was typically the case.
Most of those highly critical of Central banking do not understand its history or its function and write it off as a conspiracy against the common man. It is not.