[dragonwriter]

> Yes, but at least greenbacks are backed by real stuff.

Fiat currencies are not “backed”, you have nothing they are even theoretically guaranteed to be exchangeable for, at a fixed rate of currency to commodity, setting a value floor, at least relative to the commodity.

They are, instead, actively managed.

The theory is that this is better, at least for large, geopolitically and economically powerful, countries as issuers, because backing commodities themselves are only at best a limited fit for the (even as a value basis) desirable features of currency, and have somewhat random performance at any given time compared to that “at best”, and active management (which is also not perfect!) seems to be able to do better, if the manager governs a big and powerful enough market to start with.

[As_You_Wish]

As I said in a comment to another person, if you go down that road, nothing is "backed."

I'm just talking about regular everyday stuff. The US dollar has been exceedingly strong for a long time, due to many factors, none of which is that it is "backed" by gold or baby diapers or star trek transporters machines or orange juice.

This is just a colloquial conversation. If you want to be exacting, I can write 200 pages on it, complete with sources. But are you going to want to read it? or would I be wasting my time writing a long and thorough explanation? Wouldn't a couple of paragraphs suffice and just not have people nitpick in order to score "gotcha" points?