Come to think of it, our currency is WORSE than Monopoly money, since the printing of Monopoly money is limited by the demand for that particular game.
I'm always curious to learn more about this most grand & glorious scam. But, what can we really ever do about it?
They depend on the misseducated masses for market support & it works perfectly as anyone know whose tried to argue logically with "experts"{x=has been + spurt=a drip under pressure}.
Anytime things get shaky they wheel out the Greenspan doll & have him "talk" & then everythings OK for awhile.
I have to admit, he is the best snake oil salesman I've ever seen!
This issue about who controls the printing press is obviously not well understood. Reality in the modern world is that you don't worry about Greenspan and the Fed running the printing press--they may do it but they are a tiny fraction of the overall money supply and not relevant. The problem is privately created credits which wind up in the banking system and then in the market as money. The amount of money created by the derivative market and the securitized equity markets is several thousand times what the Fed creates.
It also represents an overhang of the most significant exposure to the financial system. The dollar is initially exposed because its underpinning is the ability of the US Government to make citizens pay taxes to support its ability to pay interest on the US debt. If the tax revenue disappears, so does the dollar. There is exposure there because if the government is successful in destroying operation of the domestic economy, people who pay taxes will have less money to pay taxes with.
However the secondary exposure is much greater. The credit market created money is dependent on cash flow from debtors--people who pay their mortgage payments, credit cards and on other debt instruments which are the basis for credit money. The overwhelming number of individuals in that group are people whose ability to make payments is exposed at a far earlier point in an economic contraction. And when these people can't pay any more, they bring the house of cards down faster than any other event.
Everyone should look at Doug Noland's articles, posted on PrudentBear.com under the title Credit Bubble Bulletin. There is a section on the site called Bear Library where I believe these articles are archieved. He puts up a new article every Saturday morning--the current article is well worth reading. So are his articles over the last several months (there were a couple of weeks he was on vacation and someone else wrote the article--find Doug's stuff in the archieve). Noland is on a crusade on the issue of private credit money however he is a professional and his work is excellent.
Excellent analogy, TSR.
Now supposing the monopoly game players were required to bring their own coins to get in the game and had to exchange the coins for monopoly money.
When a player lost all their money, they could borrow more paper money from the banker to stay in the game -- pledging their, or someone else's future labor and personal wealth for collateral with the proviso that interest was paid when due, and had to be paid with personal wealth, not borrowed monopoly money .
At some point, the personal wealth would change hands to keep interest payments current, leaving the promise of future labor to pay on the principle.
But at the point that one no longer had personal wealth to pay the interest, they were out of the game -- but were allowed to continue to play as shills for the house to keep the game going and to insure the continued collection of collateralized labor.
When a player goes bankrupt, they sign over ownership and control of their assets to the banker, and stay in the game as figureheads, so long as they protect and preserve the bankers new assets and can guarantee payment of future labors which they collect upon performance on behalf of the banker.
Your kids want to get in on the game? No problem. All they have to do is pledge the next generation's future labors, as they have no personal wealth to begin with -- everything they think they own has already been collateralized by previous players.
There are more than just a few of us who believe the FedGuv went bankrupt back in the '30's and have been acting as a figurehead and overseer for the past 70 years, transferring the resources of this country to the 'banker,' in addition to serving as the bank's collection agency for today's pledged labor.
It would be difficult to restore the specie. That would be tantamount to confronting a crooked dealer and demanding that your 'gold' be returned to you. Anything, every thing and every title that is pre-fixed by the word, 'federal,' works for the dealer these days.