Stagflation
 

"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some." [...]

"Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose."

Learning about the gold standard:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History..._States_dollar

An ever greater percentage of this country's wealth is in the hands of a few. The middle class is eroding into nonexistence. That doesn't have much to do with the gold standard, inflation, or deflation.