Thanks Carina-- Good story about the Worgl Money: It proves the point, that money does not have to be backed by silver or gold to work. The problem though, if it isn't those responsible for printing and lending money end up controlling the money supply. If their honesty could be assured, there would be no problem, as the Worg experment proves. if you're interested, here's a great historical piece on how the whole money system works. It's one of the best movies I've seen. (It's 3 hours long.) video.google.com/videoplay

While a local barter currency might do well for local services, chances are not everyone would have goods or services to sell, so those people would be buying into the local currency, and which would appreciate to match the dollar, as any local community still needs to bring in outside manufactured goods and often food and energy.

There was until just recently an alternative currency backed by silver called the Liberty dollar. After 20 years the Feds raided their offices and confiscated EVERYTHING. Now all those people holding Liberty dollars, "backed by silver" are out on a limb. All the silver backing their currency is gone!

Here are the details: mysticalmaven.com/blog/2007...ws-report/

Whether you live in city or a small community silver and gold is the only currency that you can count on. Remember, if you have a brokerage you can buy and sell silver and gold using the symbols: SLV and GLD. SLV is 10 times the price of silver. GLD is 1/10 the price of gold.

And Daniel, YES. technically the Yuan is no longer pegged to the dollar. It's been almost a year since China announced that they would be moving the peg to a "basket" of currencies, though the refuse to say what that basket is. The transition has been slow. The Chinese Yuan still does NOT float like other currencies, and the appreciation is controlled by the "peg masters," and limited to something like 1% a month. Still, for all practical purposes, it is pegged to the dollar, but that is changing. Dan, let me know if you discover anything new.

PS: China holds 1.4 trillion in US treasury notes, and they can't want to just unload them. That would tank the US stock market, our whole economy and cut the value of their holdings by an estimated 40%. SO... what they've been doing is buying up European assets and using their US treasury notes as collateral. Very smart. Eh? So in fact they have already started unloading their US dollars. Eventually this will come out.