Perhaps it is the case that the combination of Federal Reserve policy, alongside the FDIC protection against bank runs, that the monetary system has secured a stable decline for our civilization. On the margin we will be made poorer, but never suddenly all at once. Nor will the forces of good strip the Federal Reserve of its power. Their action to restore monetary sanity may be already priced in and engineered away to irrelevance by the powers that be. Sometimes it really does seem like nothing ever happens.