I could write an entire series of books on the technical workings of the FIAT monetary system. But many good books, videos and podcasts already exist, and there is little to be gained by taking any more time to talk about the detailed workings of a system that is about the break and will have to be replaced.

The point about FIAT is that the politicians, bankers and financiers who control the system have maintained that control by printing more and more money that isn’t itself pinned to anything of value being introduced to the economy or economic ecosystem that we have.

There are fixed or finite numbers of cars that exist, houses that can be built or tons of grain that can be grown and put in a shed.

Yes, the output may grow over time. But the amount of money that has been literally forced into the system – so that those in control can either have or do more, or both – has meant that what already exists – that’s what you or I earn or have as cash or in the bank, is always becoming less in real terms.

One of the most perverse elements of the FIAT part of the greed-driven story is the way that property values have continually shot up, giving the false perception of growing wealth – just as long as you actually own property, or can afford to buy it in the first place.

The rich get richer whilst the poorer get poorer has never been more true.

But a system built on nothing more than a myth or clear air was never going to last.

FIAT was always doomed. The speed of its damnation was always directly proportional to the stupidity of those in charge.

So, it was only ever a question of when those in control would succeed in devaluing that which the poorest had to the point where they couldn’t afford to survive under the rules of a system that the wealthy had themselves created.

For a long time, the continuing future of ‘Top-Down’ depended upon whether between them, the elites who influence the political classes could reimagine their top-heavy system in a way that would maintain the necessary belief of the masses. All before they lost control of the whole thing and it finally collapsed.

They had been working on solutions for a long time. But then Brexit, Covid and War in Ukraine came along, as did the ridiculous knee-jerk and ill-considered responses of the political classes. The elites then realised – like we are all about to, that their bogus greed-based system has now run out of time.

We don’t realise it, but the money system we have is not only sick, but it has also been making us sick too.

Like every other addiction we could become blinded by, under its intoxication and the stupor that accompanies money today, we do not perceive either the harm it does us personally, or how it has numbed our inhibitions or values, to how we act, treat other people and how we generally behave.

Just like every substance we can otherwise abuse, the damage we can do to ourselves and those around us personally with our relationship with money does have limitations. But those limitations simply don’t exist when the addiction that surrounds the money and greed culture are prevalent – if not even worse – amongst those who are already at the top.

There is nothing small about the irony that the introduction of the FIAT money system we have today was overseen by US President Richard Nixon, who was later impeached and had to resign because of dishonesty in Office.

There is little doubt that Nixon did away with The Gold Standard and brought FIAT in under the influence of the post-war business and explosive consumer culture that had grown exponentially in just two decades.

The role and use of money was quite literally being restrained by the rules that were meant to restrain it. Those with influence wanted to legitimise their freedom to do whatever they liked with money so that they could make more of it. This was the real moment that money became the real king.

As money, greed and the envy that propels it replaced the real system of human value, it also began to jet propel those who had most of it to the top of the ‘Top-Down’ hierarchical structure we currently have.

The ‘Top-Down’ system is where money and wealth are everything. Every part of the system corresponds to what you earn, what you spend and what you have.

There have always been wealthy people, but they have never been assumed to be ‘qualified’ previously, in the way that we do today’s ‘Billionaires’.

What was historically intended to be a very practical way to exchange what you have for what you need, by creating a medium or go-between, so that your exchange or transaction wouldn’t be held up by what the person or business you wanted something from, wanted in return, has become all about the value of that medium itself.

For a very long time, there was a very distinct set of rules in place that meant the assumed value of money as a medium was underpinned by the value of the gold that the government – or in the UK, The Bank of England, held in its vaults.

This monetary system was known as The Gold Standard.

Over time, Bank Notes and coins became promissory notes, never actually holding the value they represented themselves, but bearing ‘the promise’ that if you were to produce the money you had in your pocket, the Chief Cashier of the BoE would ‘pay the bearer on demand’. (If you have a banknote on you, take it out and have a read of the details on it!)

Money, or rather the value of money has always been played with by ‘those in the know’. But in recent centuries, the way that the real value of money was manipulated with tools such as leverage – where typically a central bank like the BoE was allowed to print perhaps three times (3x) the monetary value of the gold it held.

The more adventurous those playing with the money system became, the more freedom they wanted so that they could do even more. After all, right from the very start, it was those who knew the so-called ‘secrets’ of money, that would always end up with more and more of the stuff.

In the history of money, the most influential or pivotal moment that led to where we are today came in 1971, when the US financial system rejected and removed the anchoring that The Gold Standard provided, and the current trajectory based on the FIAT Money system was born.

Perhaps the biggest change that we face in the coming years and months, is that which will accompany the collapse of the money or currencies that we are used to, along with the system or rules that underpin every part of it, the way it functions and the way it can be manipulated by those ‘in the know’.

‘What would we do without money’ is a valid question. But it also reflects the situation and circumstances that we have been in for a long time. One where money has become the reference tool for just about everything – and regrettably for some, the way that we have started to value life itself.

There is no part of the monetary system that we have and use today, that hasn’t been broken and redefined to serve the self-interest and greed of people who have had the power, influence and ability to manipulate the monetary system in some way.

There is a natural order to everything. So even though it may take decades to happen, any system that is willfully created and manipulated to serve the interests of a few at the cost of the many will always meet its end.

Every ecosystem has a point of balance and when that point of balance is out, the balance must be restored – either by the inhabitants doing the right and respectful thing, or when they refuse to do so, by the system itself breaking and coming to its end through collapse.

This is where we are now.