Imagining the World Without the Dollar

                According to the article, "Imagining the World Without the Dollar" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/imagining-a-world-without-the-dollar/2011/04/26/AFjawKEF_story.html),  there may eventually no longer be a paperback dollar. Instead, we would have electronic currency.  Weird to fathom?  I'd say so.
               "Economists are debating the end of the era of the dollar, while news organizations paint it as a 98-pound weakling. Our so-called “fiat” currency, backed only by the full faith and credit of the government, no longer commands respect. "  If the era of the dollar ends, how would we go about buying things and doing our normal daily affairs?  Well, life would become one big swap meet, aka bartering.  We'd trade carrots for cell phones,  cows for couches.  The problem with this is that we need the coincidence of wants, which very rarely works out. Hence, we are reminded that our currency is convenient because it is a medium of exchange and a store of value.  Sounds like we don't really want to go back to bartering (with the problem of coincidence of wants), but we still have these banks. What do we do?
          The author of this article writes, "More generally, it is tempting to imagine technology filling this void. In a world without dollars, every ambitious Internet company would build a platform for transactions, featuring an electronic currency in which prices were expressed, payments made and receipts accumulated. It’s no stretch to imagine the Facebook credits now used to purchase items in games evolving into a more widely used electronic currency (perhaps nicknamed “Facebacks”)."
Tempting, yes.  But now regulating the supply of money would be an issue.  With the dollar, we have the Fed to regulate the money supply, inspect banks, and make sure everything is working as it is supposed to in this money-driven world. 
         So, I guess, neither of our other two options are really optimal. We either have the problem of the coincidence of wants with bartering, or we have the problem of regulating money supply with electronic money.  So, it seems as though we shall stick with the paperback dollar for now.   As the author writes to end his article, "When I think about our current monetary arrangements, I am inclined to paraphrase Winston Churchill on democracy: Ours is the worst possible system, except for all the others."