Only 3 percent of our ficticious currency now is ever printed on paper. The other 97 percent exists only in computer databases. And as for inflation, the volume of currency has slowly but steadily grown over a long period of time BUT recently (2009), the volume of printed money has skyrocketed, so prepare for inflation over the next few years. I wish America would have stayed on the gold standard, but in 1933 FDR perpetrated the biggest theft of the American people in history by demanding that all gold be transferred into worthless paper money. The government stole everyone's gold.