At some point there will be a monetary crisis.  It is just a matter of time. Our present monetary system is a house of cards.  Some event will bring the whole thing down.  The question is how severe will this be.  Will we have hyperinflation?  I hope not but it is possible.  Gary North does not believe that we will have full blown hyperinflation because our central bank is privately owned.   Private ownership logically implies that the bankers that own the Federal Reserve do not want to completely destroy the economy through hyperinflation.  This would negatively affect them. A hyperinflationary environment can be very dangerous politically and can lead to revolution. Gary North makes the point that countries that have had hyperinflation usually had central banks that were government owned and politically controlled.

John Williams from shadowstats.com on the other hand believes that we will see hyperinflation.  John Williams created shadowstats.com to accurately calculate inflation because Alan Greenspan changed how inflation was calculated in the 90s to understate inflation because it was politically convenient.  It is hard to believe but government inflation statistics do not include food or fuel and understates other things like housing.  John Williams created shadowstats.com because many businesses need an accurate picture of inflation to operate.  Williams simply calculates inflation the way it was done in the 1980s and sells access to his statistics on shadowstats.com.  Williams says in the interview below that real inflation is around 9%, not 2% claimed by the government.  He also says that the first signs of hyperinflation will be a sell off of the dollar. In the future, if you see the dollar being sold off by governments around the world it would probably a good idea to go the grocery store to stock up on food and supplies because shortages could be right around the corner.