I understand that, I'm just quoting textbook economics; "A medium of exchange, store of value and price setting mechanism."

The problem is that when the medium becomes the message and everyone wants lots of money, with little recognition that it is a tool, not a god, way too much gets pumped into the economy, to keep people happy, or at least chasing after the carrot and its actual investment value declines, so the price of investment goes up, relative to the value of the investment dollar.

Just so long as they can keep the prices of food, gold and silver reasonably stable, everyone seems to fall in line.

When the cost of a loaf of bread goes up, people feel poor. When the cost of a share in the bread company goes up, people feel rich.

We are about as collectively aware, as bacteria racing across a petri dish. The more people involved, the more basic the denominators needed to control them.

Fear and greed.

They can either shrink the supply of money and burn down the house/pop the stock market bubble, or blow up the foundation/destroy the value of the dollar.

Wait until the price of oil is no longer priced in dollars and all those dollars all around the world start coming home. The Dow might go to 50,000, but the price of the loaf of bread goes to $50.