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.
You are certainly at the head of the class in my book.
Brillant work in helping me cope with this crap anyway.
The Eron version of the old Savings & Loan trick is the big boys way escape like all the little bastards are doing now with skipping out on credit card debt with all these intermediary companies whose adverts are everywhere.
Isn't this a big factor straining our golden goose?