Sculpin I agree with everything you have stated except I don't think war is as great a possibility. Rather I believe rioting and all that civil disobedience could very easily come about, as in Greece for a recent example. Very unfortunate as many present governments are probably less to blame than the past, with some exceptions, namely the US. Incredibly senseless when rioters are breaking bank or government windows as all it does is add more to the county's debt burden.

Unfortunate that Canada sold off all their gold, probably will never replace it because of the black gold in the oil sands. Even if there were to be a magical change using hydrogen it would still take 15 years to change over from fossil fuels, and by that time the coming implosion would be long over.

I still think the most likely scenario is going to be that all countries will default and everyone will be back to square one. The ones whose currency will gain beyond their present state are those with an ability to produce -such as Germany, or attract tourism (Cuba) etc. - will be those that happen to have a lot of gold, like Peru.

Then with a stable gold price (low of $5,000/oz) one would think that (!) Fiat money is never going to be trusted in the future. (2) Keynesian economics where government tries to flatten out the normal waves of supply and demand has failed miserably with a result that the waves are worse than a roller coaster!

The flaw in my argument is that mankind never seems to learn from errors in the past.