Interestingly, the relative weakness of reserve currencies has made this plausible in a real way. As the debt risk of countries becomes closer to the strongest multinationals it creates the possibility for the debt of multinationals to be lower risk than any currency it can be denominated in, which happened briefly a couple years ago for the first time ever. In effect, the debt instruments are currency.<p>Right now, governments have the ability to inflate their currencies to pay for their excessive spending. If non-governmental instruments become stronger than reserve currencies then it will create a novel situation where they can't inflate away the debt even if every other government is doing it. That is new territory. Companies that generate and preserve value on a global basis will have financial instruments that are de facto currencies, much in the way gold is.<p>That would be an interesting time.