if our fiat money system was based primarily on the printing of money as you say you would be right.  but in fact the amount of money printed since 2008 has only been on the order of 1.6T give or take and mostly is retained on the balance of the Feds balance sheet as excess reserves.

as most of us here realize, USD's mostly exist as debt or virtual money so to speak.  this is a key differnence btwn what happened in Weimar Germany and Zimbabwe.  both had no or insignificant debt markets with which to issue debt backed money.  this is why when they printed money they went into hyperinflation b/c once printed they can't be removed from circulation.  

contrast this with what we've done with the USD.  the amt of leverage in the world dwarfs the actual currency by orders of magnitude.  private debt is around 55T.  the derivatives mkt is a quadrillion.  how many trillion do we owe in entitlements being paid with debt.  whats happening now is widespread defaults on this same debt which is CONTRACTING the money supply (amt of debt) hence deflation.  there won't be enough leverage to sustain prices at these levels even gold and silver.  its all about the USD as you said.  but instead of managing it down, i think they are trying to manage it back up.

UST's is betraying your arguments as well having rallied since the downgrade.  the setup is here.