Yes, but at least greenbacks are backed by real stuff. Backed by the USA, all the millions of workers, the US military, goods being produced, etc. Can a national currency be wiped out? Sure, through mismanagement. BUT, that does not negate the fact that the US dollar is backed by a whole lot of actual assets.
> Yes, but at least greenbacks are backed by real stuff.
Fiat currencies are not “backed”, you have nothing they are even theoretically guaranteed to be exchangeable for, at a fixed rate of currency to commodity, setting a value floor, at least relative to the commodity.
They are, instead, actively managed.
The theory is that this is better, at least for large, geopolitically and economically powerful, countries as issuers, because backing commodities themselves are only at best a limited fit for the (even as a value basis) desirable features of currency, and have somewhat random performance at any given time compared to that “at best”, and active management (which is also not perfect!) seems to be able to do better, if the manager governs a big and powerful enough market to start with.
As I said in a comment to another person, if you go down that road, nothing is "backed."
I'm just talking about regular everyday stuff. The US dollar has been exceedingly strong for a long time, due to many factors, none of which is that it is "backed" by gold or baby diapers or star trek transporters machines or orange juice.
This is just a colloquial conversation. If you want to be exacting, I can write 200 pages on it, complete with sources. But are you going to want to read it? or would I be wasting my time writing a long and thorough explanation? Wouldn't a couple of paragraphs suffice and just not have people nitpick in order to score "gotcha" points?
You misuse the word “backed”. The US economy does not “back” the dollar, figuratively or literally.
America, it’s workers, corporations, military, etc., will happily abandon the dollar should it become necessary. No one wants to be paid in money undergoing massive devaluation.
I'm not misusing the word "backed." I'm assuming some sophistication from the reader.
And to that point, it is true that nothing backs the dollar, but nothing backs nothing if you go down that road.
In past times, when, let's say a city was being attacked and there's a seige, and food runs out, people will sell their $500,000 diamond ring for a potato, so diamonds and gold have no value as compared to a potato.
However, if a meteor like the one that hit the earth 65 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs, hits again and wipes all of humanity out, there is no "back" of any currency anywhere.
I mean, if you're going to go down that road, let's take it to it's conclusion.
However, in the everyday world, the US dollar has a lot behind it. Like a huge military. No country is going to come in and take over the USA and throw out our money. Because we have a big military. There's a lot of trade going on with greenbacks. It is the world currency.
I'm not saying it is impossible for the dollar to go down the tubes, please don't assume I'm that stupid, nor anyone else is.
But there's a hell of a lot more reasons to stick with US dollars as a store of value, rather than bitcoin. Bit coin has got nothing, just a bunch of narcoterrorists and billionaires trying to smuggle out ill-gotten gains so they don't have to pay taxes. And the speculators working from the greater fool theory.
Crypto is backed by nothing. Nothing.