Día de los Muertos Monetarios

The Day the Dollar Died

“In the end it is not the gold that revalues, but the paper that reveals itself.”

— Anonymous Freegolder

I. The Long Stretch

For more than half a century the dollar has lived a double life—half spirit, half flesh. It is our measure of all things, yet itself unmeasured. It moves as number, not matter, a promise circulating so quickly that no one stops to ask what was promised in the first place.

Each new debt issue, each quantitative easing, each rescue package—another pull on the same rubber band. Faith became elasticity; elasticity became illusion. The system learned to confuse resilience with immortality.

But elasticity has limits. The rubber thins, the scent of friction rises, and tomorrow begins to suspect that it has already been spent.

II. The SNAP of SNAP

Then a small sound—barely audible, yet seismic: SNAP. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, that modest acronym, becomes the echo of the metaphor itself.

A pause in payments, a flicker in confidence, and suddenly the public glimpses what had always been true: every government benefit is a promise, and every promise is a strand in the same fragile web. When one trembles, the vibration travels the length of the band.

Markets twitch. Spreads widen. Not because of hunger, but because belief has skipped a beat.

III. The Day of the Dead Paper

November 1 — Día de los Muertos. Candles flicker for saints and ancestors…and perhaps for paper wealth itself.

There lies the dollar, embalmed in confidence, serenaded by spreadsheets. Around it, the mourners hum an old tune:

“This’ll be the day that I die…”

The day the music died; the day the dollar died; the day arithmetic reclaimed its throne.

IV. The Transition

In the Freegold view, death is transformation. Paper dissolves, but value condenses. The symbol yields to the substance.

As the rubber band releases, stored tension becomes heat—hyper-inflation in paper terms, hyper-deflation in gold terms. Two sides of the same realization. And gold, long silent, begins to hum again—not traded for profit, but recognized for truth.

V. The Revaluation

FOFOA once played with a simple lens: take a contemporaneous gold price and translate it through its own measure—31.1 grams to the ounce. The arithmetic is a metaphor, a translation exercise from illusion back to reality.

Example of the translation (symbolic, not predictive):

4,020 × 31.1 = $125,000 per ounce

A number offered here as parable: it reads like a confession of paper’s loss and gold’s rediscovery.

At that level, gold does not so much rise as the dollar confesses. The map no longer covers the territory; the rubber band lies slack, its tension spent, its truth restored.

VI. Resurrection of Value

From the silence, new music. Work meets value, value meets work. Gold no longer shouts from tickers; it listens beneath every price.

This is not profit. It is memory. Humanity remembering what endures when promises fail. Bread still feeds. Light still shines. And the coin that cannot default quietly retakes its place as the yardstick of the possible.

VII. Epilogue — The Quiet After

November 2. Sunrise.

Markets reopen, but speak a new tongue. Indices whisper, “The map is not the territory.” Faith, once spent, cannot be re-issued.

Some will say the dollar died; others, that value was reborn. Both will be right. The band has snapped. The music has died. Yet beneath the static, a steady pulse: 31.1 grams to the ounce — a heartbeat of truth rediscovered.

Author’s Note (Important):

This essay is a parable about faith, perception, and the hidden architecture of value. References to “the day the dollar died” and to numerical translations of gold are allegorical — literary devices used to explore the Freegold idea of revaluation and the psychology of money. This piece is not financial advice, market prediction, or a trade recommendation.

— FOFOA-inspired reflections for readers who listen for the sound of value beneath the noise of numbers.

If you’d like a downloadable HTML file or a Substack-ready export (with metadata), tell me and I’ll generate it for you.

That'll do, pig, that'll do.

Haha — perfect closing line. 🐖

Glad you enjoyed it, and I have to say: that might be the most FOFOA use of a Babe quote ever — a tidy, understated epilogue after a grand allegory about the death of money.

If you ever want a companion piece (maybe “The Resurrection of Value: Notes from the Quiet After” or a mock FOFOA comment-section reply thread), I’d be thrilled to help craft it in the same style.

Written by AI.