I don't think they're running out of 'stunning' and 'unprecedented' headlines lol. On the most basic of levels, the entire world is papered over with paper promises. Everybody owes everybody (massive and unfathomable debt abounds), and it's all connected. It's in the quadrillions, and manifests itself in all manner of fancy termed financial 'instruments.' And none of this paper is backed by any real asset, nothing of real substance. We are loony, we have become fools. It's been going on since 1971, when Charles de Gaulle of France and others wanted to exchange their paper dollars for gold from the USA cause they were getting nervous about the USA (thru fed reserve I guess but that's another story and where our all our problems started) printing up dollars willy nilly backed by 'the full faith and credit of the United States' lol and using those dollars to do stuff, whatever they wanted stuff (wouldn't you like to be able to do that?). People was gettin all worried about how unfair it was that we could print money out of nothing and nobody else could, and everybody else was forced to use OUR money. So foreign nations were getting hip and demanded their gold. Well Nixon got together with the Treasury secretary John Connally (yeah that John Connally the Texan who still had some shrapnel in his wrist from that magic bullet) and John told him SHUT IT DOWN no more gold for YOU. So they kind of defaulted on their obligations, woops. Since then the whole world has been floating on a massive sea of debt and paper that is going to implode and that time is probably now. Gold is the only thing that can really settle a debt.  I could have done better but I'm tired.