"With the rapid devaluation of our currency, can it make long term cycles seem like something they are not?"   It can make an artificial boom time seem to be brought about by demand but really only easy money through credit expansion.

"Either making the cycle seem accelerated or lagging depending upon?" No answer. Not that knowlegible on cycles. But Mises from the Austrian school of economics said that every boom brought about by excessive credit expansion will turn into a bust brought about by the voluntary abandonmnet of the credit expansion, or the total destruction of the currency. So that is a cycle that has played out many times in recorded history.

"How does the manipulation of our currency and how people deploy it put a wrench in long term thinking?" Easy money via credit expansion (artificially low interest rates) makes demand seem higher than it really is, because the demand is artificial and temporary. When the credit expansion reaches its limit, it is discovered the additional demand was brought about by credit expansion instead of real demand from real capital. So the manipulation causes industry to gear up for demand that is fleeting. This is when the credit induced boom turns to bust and the inflation of the money supply (via credit expansion) turns to deflation (credit defaulting or at least ceasing to expand thereby causing the money supply available to buy goods to become less).

"We price commodities by using a standard that is also traded as a commodity. Would we not need a static instrument to truly tell the historic value of something?"    Yes. Something that has a large stock to flow. Something that can not be expanded or contracted in quantity in large degrees in short time frames. A commodity that has a much more static supply. Maybe something that expands at about the rate of population expansion. Hmmmmm................ wonder what that could be.

"Am I on to something or just on something?" You are on to something. Something that is re-learned every time a currency blows up because it's quantity is tied to nothing and politicians/central banks can not keep from destroying its value by over producing it.

Murry Rothbard wrote a good book about the subject. What has the government done to our money.

John