I link to this in case you have not seen it yet:

It shows  what has happened to the US dollar since the Federal Reserve   appeared on the scene in 1913 and started busily taking care of the currency’s ‘stability:

Inflation, which is the loss of value in your saved dollars, is caused by the Federal Reserve through its management of the money supply. Next time you see Ben Bernanke on the television telling you that they "will take the necessary steps" to help the country, consider their track record so far, and their dismal failure at their stated objective: preserving the value of America’s money…

The Federal Reserve System is fraudulent. Whatever its stated purpose, its effect is to create a hidden mechanism of deficit spending by politicians, through the insidious invisible taxation of monetary debasement (inflation). With printed money, the Government can buy services for its voters before the effects of inflation are felt. The voters money buys less the following year, as the new money has raised prices, and they are often none the wiser.

A test to see if you are paying attention. Who wrote the following magnificent passage? I read it out at a dinner for the FCO Top Brass in Warsaw to introduce Leszek Balcerowicz, the genius at the heart of Poland’s economic transformation following the end of communism:

When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money.

Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor—your claim upon the energy of the men who produce.

Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money.

What if the government defaults on that moral principle?