All the major countries in the world are in a race to debase their currencies in order to restart their economies. Either economic growth returns or—as some doomsayers predict—the 40-year run of fiat currencies ends. To be sure, a return to the exact terms of the Bretton Woods Monetary Agreement is a near political impossibility because of the traumatic devaluation in the U.S. dollar it would cause. Yet, a move away from debt-based currencies to a system somewhat based on hard assets is not out of the picture if the global economy doesn’t recover or policy makers don’t allow for a painful deleveraging, some investors ... (full story)