Charlie -

You ask what happens in a currency devaluation. I lived outside of the US for some years in the 1980's (country unnamed). We had about 3 currency devaluations in that time. First, there would be rumors in the media about a currency devaluation. Next, people would take as much cash as they could scrape up, run to the grocery or big box, and clean the shelves. They would take the car to the filling station and fill up. No matter that they didn't need 100 liters of cooking oil or 100 kilos of rice. The central bank would then announce a devaluation against the currency peg, which was then the US dollar. So, your local currency would go down by, let's say 30%, and your grocery and other costs would rise by 30% (so much in life is a trade-off, ya know?). The only people you meet in the US who act that way are "preparedness oriented." If you held dollars or, expecially, yen, you did just fine.

The only parallel I see now is that a small part of the US population is aware of non-generalized media hints of a devaluation. Only a few are thinking of "beans, band-aids and bullets." Fewer still are thinking of Tyhee. Hmmn, we must be the elect.