As for gold...I've never seen a living adult human being who didn't take that stuff seriously when you showed it to them...or they held it in their hand. But I have heard of people burning paper money...or taking an entire shopping bag full of it just to buy a loaf of bread. That's what happens when the pyramid scheme of unbacked and grossly inflated paper money collapses and the bubble bursts. It has happened in many, many places. It can happen here too.

Now, gold won't do you any good when you're on the deck of the sinking Titanic....nor will paper money at that point...but it'll do you much good if you get rescued, just as soon as you set foot on the next ship or on the dock.

We can all find some extreme circumstance in life where an exchangeable and normally valuable commodity is suddenly worth nothing. Doesn't disprove the fact that a dollar backed by something real is far stronger than a dollar backed by nothing but itself and the word of those who printed it.

By the way, since all national currencies in the world are now unbacked fiat money...everyone is vulnerable this time. Not just one nation this time. Everyone.

Part of what worries me is that nations facing financial ruin will often stumble into a war as a way of supposedly "solving the problem". That's like solving a small kitchen fire by throwing a gallon of gasoline on it.