Thanks for the kind words and comments.

 "With the shameful results in the medical field clearly on display, one would think that IF Congress had the best interests of the citizens at heart, they'd pull the exemption.  I think that's an indication of where we citizens stand."                   Exactly. Pretty easy to see where their bread is buttered. I'm not saying all of congress is corrupt, but certainly enough of them to make the rest of the apples in the barrel unappealing. 

"Finally, as I've said before, please explain to me WHY the system has to crash when the entire world's nations have collectively lost their minds and gone to fiat currency, backed by nothing."                                It is not the fact that it is a fiat currency. There would be nothing wrong with a fiat currency if it were managed properly. The problem is how the fiat money is created and maintained. The problem is with our basic monetary system. The fractional reserve system where 93-97% (depends on where you read) of what we call "money" is checkbook account entries created by commercial banks when they loan new money into existence. As you know, it is created out of nothing when the bank makes the loan (loans create deposits, not the other way around). Then that newly created money is destroyed as the principal portion of the loan is paid off. But what is not either created nor destroyed is the interest charge attached to the loan proceeds. So when nearly our entire money supply is dependent on banks making new loans as fast as old loans are being paid off (to maintain a consistent money supply), the problem is, where does the money come from to pay the interest? When 93-97% of our money in circulation is drawing an interest charge that interest has to be paid. If a person takes even a cursory effort of thinking about how that works out, it becomes evident that so much (almost all) of the money supply is being charged an interest rate, that is a lot of friggin interest. But since nearly all of our money is created by debt (actually all of it but the physical cash portion does not accrue interest), where does the money come from to pay the continual seigniorage of interest? It comes from taking on more debt (creating more new money from nothing). It is a Ponzi Scheme, albeit a very long running one. Debt HAS to continually expand or the system collapses from debtors not being able to service their debts.

Now some will argue that velocity is what makes payment of the interest amount doable. They will argue that money can be used multiple times in transactions so a single dollar can do a lot of "work" by passing through many hands. And this is true to a degree. They will give an example of ten people, each owing another person a dollar, and by passing a single dollar around the circle of then people a single dollar paid off a total of ten dollars of debt. It is a great example and a great way to satisfy the plebes that they are not getting monetarily raped after all. And that might actually work if the debts were all symmetrical. But they are not. Not even close. The debts are very asymmetrical and the more likely example would be of the ten people one person would be owed nine dollars by each one of the other people owing that single person a dollar. Then how does velocity pay off the interest portion of the debt when all the money is created as debt??????

So in a long winded explanation FlyLow, if you have not went to sleep yet, the reason it can not continue indefinitely is that at some point the debt gets so large and the interest due so high that either everything defaults from the debt not being sustainable because they have become so large, or money creation in a graph form starts to look like a hockey stick as the new creation of money has to be so great to service current debts. In other words debt goes exponential (remember all new money is created as debt) to pay off the debt. Sound like a sound system that can go on forever? Such a thing could only be thought up by the likes of world class bankers like JP Morgan who once stated that "gold is money, and nothing else". Or "gold is money, everything else is credit".

The fact that the financial system is being artificially sustained with ZIRP is to me a sign that the monetary system is getting long in the tooth. At regular, normal interest rates set by the market the system would have already imploded. ZRIP (notice we plebes do not get zero interest, we pay from 4 to 15 or whatever credit card companies are getting now), ZIRP is a last gasp effort to keep an unsustainable system sustainable for a short while longer. All the while.............. wait for it.............. drum roll................. debts grow larger. According to the IMF global debt is at 152 Trillion. That is Trillion with a "T".  Of that 152 trillion of debt the ten largest central banks have bought 21.4 trillion. So lets see if we can figure out this incestuous monetary circle jerk. The "money" (and I use the term loosely meaning actually fiat currency units) that was created out of nothing by banks by loaning it into existence, 152 trillion dollars worth and of that central banks have created another 21.4 trillion dollars worth of new fiat currency (again out of nothing) to buy the debt that was originally created out of nothing. And that 152 trillion is accruing interest charges that will be paid by..................... more debt that is money created out of nothing. 

I'm sure this is all going to work out fine FlyLow. (sarcasm). That is as far as I got in your post. Will come back and finish the rest later.

John