We're talking at cross purposes and seem to be having completely different conversations. You're talking about the history of the perception of the US dollar verses other currencies.
I'm talking about the future viability of any currency system in any nation that
requires exponential economic growth on a finite planet. I'm talking about the fact that our money system loans money into existence with interest —*and therefore ALWAYS assumes that the future will be bigger and better than today —*otherwise all that interest means extra money that's got nothing backing it.
The tricky thing about exponential growth is that you don't see it till it's too late. Imagine human beings are in a bottle. We have plenty of sustainable growth medium in the bottle, but cannot use more outside the bottle. Say it takes a minute to 'double' the number of human beings in the bottle. The bottle is 'full' at midnight. At what point is the bottle 1/8 full? 1/4 full? 1/2 full? The answers?
1/8 full = 11:57
1/4 full = 11:58
1/2 full = 11:59
FULL = 12:00
Who, when they were looking around the 'bottle' of planet earth, would think there was a problem when 7/8th's of the planet's resources are still available?
What I'm trying to do is imagine an economic model that allows for when the earth is 'full' —*whenever that is. (I don't want to get off track and discuss when it will be 'full' —*but just the hypothesis).
When I quote the data below, I'm actually not interested in the state of the US economy —*but the exponential debt trends that it represents as a test case for fiat currencies with interest built into the system. Interest DEMANDs that the future be bigger than today. What happens when it simply physically can't?
Quote:
* Money supply growth has gone parabolic. It took us from 1620 until 1974 to create the first $1 trillion of US money stock. Every road, factory, bridge, school, factory, and house built, every unit of economic transaction that ever took place over those first 350 years required the creation of $1 trillion in money stock. But it only took 10 months [edit: 2006 data] to create the most recent $1 trillion and I don't recall seeing an entire continent's worth of factories, schools or bridges built during that time. [Edit: that figure is now an astonishing 4.5 months as of March 2008]
* Household debt has doubled in only 6 years. Think about that for a minute.
* Total credit market debt (that's everything) was about $5 trillion in 1975, has increased by $5 trillion in just 2 years, and now stands at over $51 trillion.
* The wealth gap between the super-wealthy and everybody else is widening at a furious pace.
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