People imagine that because a government stands behind it that there is more control or safety measures — and there obviously are — but the distance between the two is closer than you would initially think. The overall value of fiat is contingent on the whims, fluctuations, and successes of a country. Supply can be manipulated through arbitrary decisions by a central bank who can print money as monetary policy significantly affecting inflation

Effectively what this means is that a government can unilaterally decide to devalue everything in a country overnight. Think of quantitative easing as a stock split where instead of receiving two for one, the government splits your stock and keeps half.

That is what effectively occurred following the 2008 financial collapse and there was nothing to stop it or nothing we could do about it. The argument that it prevented deeper financial issues was irrelevant to normal people — they didn’t cause the problem! They might have been dependent on the pensions accrued from the companies that were failing but their blame started and finished with the rules and practices of the banking profession.