Many people wonder what makes gold special as a store of value. When inflation fears set in, people flock to gold. One answer is that the dollar used to be backed by gold. An even better answer I will leave to Judy Shelton, an economist and director of the National Endowment for Democracy:

Here is an excerpt from a longer debate, where Tom Woods lays out the case against the Federal Reserve.

As the Daily Reckoning puts it, “EVERY fiat currency since the Romans first began the practice in the first century has ended in devaluation and eventual collapse.” (4) There are two caveats to their argument, though: 1) if the fiat currency was ended for another reason, say the country was conquered and the currency replaced, then those examples are obviously ignored and 2) if the currency is still around today*, it also doesn’t count, because the currency will presumably fail in the future. The problem with this assessment is simple: What else can happen to a currency?

There are major advantages to 100% reserve banking. Right off the bat, banking panics are simply impossible. Since every bank has all its money on hand (or its customers aren’t contractually entitled to it at that time), there is no way that a run on the bank will cause a bank to go under. And therefore, large banking crises, such as the one we are seeing today, or saw in the Great Depression, or in the panics of 1819, 1837, 1857, 1871, 1893, 1907, etc. would never happen.

With a failed dollar we’d have far more church-going citizens eager to stockpile communion crackers. And for the altruistic of the local tribes, the communion crackers might end up back in the offering basket.