Yep... US of A... it is not necessarily their fault. There are multiple factors that lead to this. Especially paper money.. but there is a twist there as well. If the gold standard was still here... I don't know if we would have had the same progress. Or maybe there could have been even more progress if the US didn't became such a constricted system, build upon the strict mechanics of subjugating/enslaving its own people lately in the last few decades... Instead of helping the little guy, and giving less incentives to blood sucking corporations. The main problem with US is that they have like almost the global currency... and the politicians from that country behave like children... bough on pennies on the dollar by the big pharma.. big oil... big tobacco, the hard hand grip of the telecommunication sector and the last one... the military industrial complex. The fault is that US wanted to behave like any other country and the citizens of that state behaved like the usual bribe able politicians with no integrity or moral values and responsibility for any vision of the future! And you can't have that... You can't be that... In the same time to be a leader and a joker! This is not a Batman movie. The leader must lead by example, and take responsibility. And I think a smaller country would have done a better job shaping the ideal future and the rest to follow... but that is not how the world works! ... But the rest of the answer is that the paper money is a rigged system and it/there was/is too much abuse and fraud with invisible numbers on a screen or with "fake" paper that has less value than toilet paper if the cards where on the table with full transparency! And that is the problem.