According To Wikipedia, Fiat money has been defined variously as:
any money declared by a government to be legal tender
state-issued money which is neither convertible by law to any other thing, nor fixed in value in terms of any objective standard
money without intrinsic value
The term derives from the Latin fiat ("let it be done", "it shall be")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money
Ron Paul has famously repeated his opinion that every "fiat" currency in history has failed.
What Dr. Paul conveniently ignores is the fact that, in every case where this is true, said "fiat" currencies were subject to interest.
According to Mike Montagne, the founder of PEOPLE For Mathematically Perfected Economy™,
"The destructive issue we know then, because the idea that a form of money can injure us *because it is paper* is itself laughable. Every fiat currency in history (so far) failed not because it was paper, but because the tokens of wealth were subject to interest."
