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I'm not an economist, and don't propose to suggest anything new or radical. Currencies need to be backed by assets, for sure, and in the modern world mostly they are - at least the sound ones are.

My understanding of the crisis of the past couple of years, at source, was that we saw an old-fashioned bubble caused by artificial property-value inflation pushed along by collective human greed, aided and abetted by loose lending practices assuming that in a time of increasing wealth and population growth, the value of property would always rise with virtually no theoretical upper limit. Surprise surprise, it turned out to be not so. This has happened innumerable times throughout history, for centuries. It's always "different this time" - yet in reality, it's always the same.

Blaming the existence of the Federal Reserve as the root of all evil is somewhat naive and simplistic, the stuff of conspiracy theorists, who at core are always naive, ignorant simpletons (this is a general observation only and in no way personal to anyone who might be reading these forums). There are other factors involved.

FIAT money just means the respective government accepts this currency as payment for debts and taxes, so it's as good as any kind of money in practice, and better than most. It's not in any government's interest to devalue the currency in which taxes are owed, for obvious reasons.

<blockquote data-quote="ArchieBedford" data-source="post: 100492" data-attributes="member: 2281">I&#039;m not an economist, and don&#039;t propose to suggest anything new or radical.&nbsp; Currencies need to be backed by assets, for sure, and in the modern world mostly they are - at least the sound ones are. My understanding of the crisis of the past couple of years, at source, was that we saw an old-fashioned bubble caused by artificial property-value inflation pushed along by collective human greed, aided and abetted by loose lending practices assuming that in a time of increasing wealth and population growth, the value of property would always rise with virtually no theoretical upper limit. Surprise surprise, it turned out to be not so. This has happened innumerable times throughout history, for centuries. It&#039;s always &quot;different this time&quot; - yet in reality, it&#039;s always the same. Blaming the existence of the Federal Reserve as the root of all evil is somewhat naive and simplistic, the stuff of conspiracy theorists, who at core are always naive, ignorant simpletons (this is a general observation only and in no way personal to anyone who might be reading these forums). There are other factors involved.FIAT money just means the respective government accepts this currency as payment for debts and taxes, so it&#039;s as good as any kind of money in practice, and better than most. It&#039;s not in any government&#039;s interest to devalue the currency in which taxes are owed, for obvious reasons.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="ArchieBedford, post: 100492, member: 2281"] I'm not an economist, and don't propose to suggest anything new or radical. Currencies need to be backed by assets, for sure, and in the modern world mostly they are - at least the sound ones are. My understanding of the crisis of the past couple of years, at source, was that we saw an old-fashioned bubble caused by artificial property-value inflation pushed along by collective human greed, aided and abetted by loose lending practices assuming that in a time of increasing wealth and population growth, the value of property would always rise with virtually no theoretical upper limit. Surprise surprise, it turned out to be not so. This has happened innumerable times throughout history, for centuries. It's always "different this time" - yet in reality, it's always the same. Blaming the existence of the Federal Reserve as the root of all evil is somewhat naive and simplistic, the stuff of conspiracy theorists, who at core are always naive, ignorant simpletons (this is a general observation only and in no way personal to anyone who might be reading these forums). There are other factors involved. FIAT money just means the respective government accepts this currency as payment for debts and taxes, so it's as good as any kind of money in practice, and better than most. It's not in any government's interest to devalue the currency in which taxes are owed, for obvious reasons. [/QUOTE]

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