It's the banking system itself which has created this catastrophe, not the government. The government merely aided and abetted the banks by not more stringently regulating their irresponsible lending policies (and their creation of vast amounts of fictional money through the process of lending). It's been happening for several hundred years. It began long before the USA even existed as a political entity. It began as soon as banks started lending out more money than they had in real deposits...and the governments let them do it. Why? Well, because the governments themselves were usually deeply in debt to those same bankers, that's why.

You thought the government made the money we use? Ha! Sure, they make the physical bills and coins that are in circulation, yes...but that's only a very small amount of all the supposed money that is in play in the economy. Most of it exists only on a computer screen or a balance sheet, and it was never minted or printed by the government. It was created by a bank making a loan...it appeared out of thin air...and then went straight back into the banking system...and even drew interest charges, creating even more money from nowhere....all of which greatly enlarged the national money supply with money that was never real, made bankers rich, and it all came from nowhere.

The government didn't create that money. The banks created it out of thin air every time they made a new loan to somebody.

That's a gigantic pyramid scheme. Pyramid schemes always work for awhile, but in the end they collapse, because they are based on a fiction.

We are now seeing such a collapse, and it's occurring on a worldwide basis.

Yes, as Doug said, we are in deep shit.

Gold is real. Food is real. Oil is real. A printed bill is real (albeit merely symbolic of value). A minted coin is real. Most of the money that the banks supposedly have on deposit isn't real.

This would very quickly become evident if the general public all panicked at the same time and tried to withdraw their money from the banks and get hard cash. It ain't there. The entire system would then collapse, and you'd have something bordering on anarchy.

I'm sure the government is quite concerned about avoiding such a possibility. I'd be concerned if I were them.