“Nationals,” as they were called, were inflation money, war money, flat money, and were discounted a fraction of a percent on day of first issue, concealed as “exchange service charge.” They were spendable money and never did drop to zero but were inflationary and exchange reflected it increasingly; new government was spending money it did not have.
Fiat currency = inflationary war currency in order to fund unpopular policies that no one would pay for. Workaround is printing more money to fund without consent. The USD has lost 99% of it’s purchasing power in the last 100 years (started when the dollar became increasingly unpegged to gold, and esp. once it was entirely “temporary” irredeemable for gold during the Nixon administration, going full fiat, and debasing at exponential rates ever since. Like all purely fiat currency it’s trajectory is invariably a downward path to 0 or near 0 value.
