Congress authorized the Fed not only to create money for the government but also to “smooth out” the economy by manipulating credit (which also happens to be a re-election tool for incumbents). Politics being what they are, this manipulation has been almost exclusively in the direction of making credit easy to obtain. The Fed used to make more credit available to the banking system by monetizing federal debt, that is, by creating money. Under the structure of our “fractional reserve” system, banks were authorized to employ that new money as “reserves” against which they could make new loans. Thus, new money meant new credit.

Let’s attempt to define what gives the dollar objective value. As we will see in the next section, the dollar is “backed” primarily by government bonds, which are promises to pay dollars. So today, the dollar is a promise backed by a promise to pay an identical promise. What is the nature of each promise? If the Treasury will not give you anything tangible for your dollar…