I think our major problem is, that our US dollar isnt backed by shit. It's just printable. We print Millions every couple weeks, and bail out banks and other companies (that are funded by feds) by just printing paper. The more money we print, the less value our dollar has, which is why prices on everything go up each and every year.
Now if we backed the US dollar with gold and silver, prices would stay pretty consistent. The price of things don't really go up, your dollar is just becomes worth less than before.
And looking even deeper into the situation, I (and many others) believe that one day, nobody will want the US dollar. Right now the US dollar is the international currency, meaning, if Russia wants to buy oil from Iran, they have to exchange Russia currency into US dollar, and Iran has to exchange their money into US currency to do the oil trade. Then Iran would have to exchange currencies once again. basically huge hassle for some paper that isn't backed by shit.
Another interesting fact, Major countries of the UN had a meeting last year (leaving America out) and they want to change the world currency to Euro.
Now if that happened (or when), I would expect America to go into another great depression, banks closing and taking the money, ect ect...
long story short, you should invest in something REAL, like gold or silver...or anything that has some kind of value other than green printed money. would be a good investment in long run.
just my 2 cents.
PS: i dont think 2012 is last year of life, but ironically enough, my bday is on 'dooms day'. 12/21/2012 
so you can hang out with me if you want to live 8) lol.
A few things.
First, The Euro won't replace the dollar anytime soon if ever seeing as the EU crisis is worse than the one here in the U.S.
second, printing more money doesn't cause inflation, releasing money into the economy does. We have billions of dollars sitting in warehouses ready to be put into the economy when it is needed. Money constantly gets destroyed, so we need to keep putting some back into the economy.
Third, it would be an AWFUL idea to back the dollar with gold and silver again. Look what happened to Greece. The Euro has a fixed exchange rate (which is what the gold standard would be), meaning they cannot devalue their money nor can they print more. This means that even if their economy is going downhill, there is literally no way for them to try to counterbalance it by devaluing or printing more money. There are pros and cons to both sides, but we're better off how we are right now.