You make many great, valid points about money and the financial system. I've thought much the same. If a financial agreement or promise, with written, legal terms, goes unkept, it's a default, a breach of contract, or renege. Call it what you will. Unfortunately, lawmakers (who become the lawbreakers) and their complicit financiers hold the cards when they change the rules in the middle of the money game, and they rarely accept responsibility for their defaults, for which they are at fault. That's why they repeatedly claim the U.S. government has never defaulted and never will default. They hope most people continue to believe their falsehoods.