The following story is a potential fictional time line for the day the dollar died. I hope not to instill fear or loathing but to give everyone some perspective on a POSSIBLE outcome which does not really take much of a reach to come to any conclusion. Despite popular belief and promises from those who wish to rob you of your savings and investments, the collapse of the dollar might just be an event measured in hours, not days as their control is not what it seems.....

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Mike was less than an hour from home in Minnesota after dropping his load off in Fargo but knew he needed to top his tank off this Sunday evening to insure his rig would make it home. He pulled into the Petro Truck Stop just outside of Fargo and hopped out of the cab into the bitter twenty below temperatures which he could not believe had already hit at ten o'clock at night. He slid his fuel card into the pump waiting for the next prompt when the "SEE ATTENDANT" message flashed in the screen. He blustered, figured it was another card problem and whipped out his Master Card and slid it in after the pump reset and again the "SEE ATTENDANT" message flashed up. "What the hell is going on?" he thought to himself as he wandered into the long line of drivers boisterously yelling at managers and clerks alike.

The imperative of greater global currency stability means the world can no longer rely, as it has done since the end of the gold standard, on a currency issued by a single country, the head of the IMF said on Tuesday.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, restated his view that a new global currency might evolve out of the Special Drawing Right, the Fund's in-house unit of account.

"That probably has to be a basket," Strauss-Kahn said of the eventual replacement for the dollar. "In a globalised world there is no domestic solution," he told a forum

Des Moines, Iowa - A study says the poorest Iowans paid nearly double the percentage of their income in taxes than the wealthiest paid, a gap the authors argue underscores the need to reform Iowa's tax system.

The study by the Child and Family Policy Center showed that Iowa families making less than $20,000 annually paid roughly 11 percent of their income in state and local taxes. Earners averaging nearly $1 million paid 7.4 percent in taxes, but that was reduced to 6 percent because federal tax payments are deductible when calculating state tax liability.

America's mainstream religious denominations used to teach the faithful that they would be rewarded in the afterlife. But over the past generation, a different strain of Christian faith has proliferated - one that promises to make believers rich in the here and now. Known as the prosperity gospel, and claiming tens of millions of adherents, it fosters risk-taking and intense material optimism. It pumped air into the housing bubble. And one year into the worst downturn since the Depression, it's still going strong.

Like the ambitions of many immigrants who attend services there, Casa del Padre's success can be measured by upgrades in real estate. The mostly Latino church, in Charlottesville, Virginia, has moved from the pastor's basement, where it was founded in 2001, to a rented warehouse across the street from a small mercado five years later, to a middle-class suburban street last year, where the pastor now rents space from a lovely old Baptist church that can't otherwise fill its pews. Every Sunday, the parishioners drive slowly into the parking lot, never parking on the sidewalk or grass - "because Americanos don't do that," one told me - and file quietly into church. Some drive newly leased SUVs, others old work trucks with paint buckets still in the bed. The pastor, Fernando Garay, arrives last and parks in front, his dark-blue Mercedes Benz always freshly washed, the hubcaps polished enough to reflect his wingtips.

It can be hard to get used to how much Garay talks about money in church, one loyal parishioner, Billy Gonzales, told me one recent Sunday on the steps out front. Back in Mexico, Gonzales's pastor talked only about "Jesus and heaven and being good." But Garay talks about jobs and houses and making good money, which eventually came to make sense to Gonzales: money is "really important," and besides, "we love the money in Jesus Christ's name! Jesus loved money too!" That Sunday, Garay was preaching a variation on his usual theme, about how prosperity and abundance unerringly find true believers. "It doesn't matter what country you're from, what degree you have, or what money you have in the bank," Garay said. "You don't have to say, 'God, bless my business. Bless my bank account.' The blessings will come! The blessings are looking for you! God will take care of you. God will not let you be without a house!"

Pastor Garay, 48, is short and stocky, with thick black hair combed back. In his off hours, he looks like a contented tourist, in his printed Hawaiian shirts or bright guayaberas. But he preaches with a ferocity that taps into his youth as a cocaine dealer with a knife in his back pocket. "Fight the attack of the devil on my finances! Fight him! We declare financial blessings! Financial miracles this week, NOW NOW NOW!" he preached that Sunday. "More work! Better work! The best finances!" Gonzales shook and paced as the pastor spoke, eventually leaving his wife and three kids in the family section to join the single men toward the front, many of whom were jumping, raising their Bibles, and weeping. On the altar sat some anointing oils, alongside the keys to the Mercedes Benz.

Americans, it turns out, are less willing than people in many other Western countries to pay for their online news, according to a new study by the Boston Consulting Group.

Among regular Internet users in the United States, 48 percent said in the survey, conducted in October, that they would pay to read news online, including on mobile devices. That result tied with Britain for the lowest figure among nine countries where Boston Consulting commissioned surveys. In several Western European countries, more than 60 percent said they would pay.

When asked how much they would pay, Americans averaged just $3 a month, tied with Australia for the lowest figure - and less than half the $7 average for Italians. The other countries included in the study were Germany, France, Spain, Norway and Finland.

"Consumer willingness and intent to pay is related to the availability of a rich amount of free content," said John Rose, a senior partner and head of the group's global media practice. "There is more, better, richer free in the United States than anywhere else."