The only backing for today's currency is trust. The Federal Reserve Act was born in 1910 on Jekyll Island in Georgia, at a resort owned by JP Morgan, in a secret meeting to protect the participants and prevent Congress from opposing the passage of the bill. What is The Federal Reserve Act? It created a central bank, modeled after the bank of England. It is a banking cartel, it relies on the government to enforce its cartel agreements, and it's a hybrid, part private, part politically controlled. The 12 owners of the cartel are from England, Germany, and America. The purpose of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 is to insure the taxpayers will bail out the banking industry when they lose control of the currency. The TARP money bailed out the big banks, where is that money? Our currency system is called fractional-reserve banking. This is the practice of: issuing more receipts for bank deposits than there are deposits, allowing banks to create money out of nothing, allowing banks to legally collect interest on nothing, and allowing banks to make promises that are impossible to keep. With a 10 percent reserve requirement, if a bank gets a $100 deposit and sends $10 to the central bank as a reserve, it can legally lend $90. When the borrower spends this $90, the receiving bank sets aside $9 and lends $81 and on until the initial $100 deposit becomes $900 in new money, if the banks lend all of the money, they are legally allowed to lend. This process inflates the money supply (inflation), which creates a boom/bust cycle. This is the current monetary system. The booms and busts get worse. The dollar depreciates. Central planning increases. Information becomes more distorted. This will end badly. Worse, it may start over again.