World currencies lost a lot of value in 2014. If you lived outside the United States, you would have done much better holding gold rather than local cash this past year. Check out this chart from The Market Oracle:

Eventually the Federal Reserve will be unable to artificially prop-up the U.S. dollar. When that happens, we need only look around the world to see what life will be like. Russia is the most dramatic example this year. Consumer prices there rose 11.4% in December alone! As Bloomberg reports, “Russia's currency lost 44 percent this year, the second-most in the world after Ukraine's hryvnia.”

Nearer to home, news broke yesterday of an official recession in Venezuela, which is also experiencing terrible inflation. “Twelve-month inflation reached 63.6% in November,” CNBC reports. Venezuela's pain is largely due to the crash in oil prices.

Americans remain oblivious, believing the U.S. economy is safe from the scourges of an international currency war. Of course, the strength of the U.S. dollar remains a byproduct of the Fed's money printing and zero-percent interest rates. The mainstream media and government maintain that inflation remains subdued in the U.S., which is officially 1.3%. But cracks are beginning to show in this narrative.

The latest data show that U.S. rents rose about 3% this year and that more and more people are renting. The amount paid by U.S. renters is up nearly 5% compared to last year, with total rental households increasing by 2%. Meanwhile, homeownership fell to a 20-year low in the third quarter of 2014. Forecasters see rents increasing 3.5% in 2015.

Rents aren't the only major element of an American's budget that is inflating much faster than the official measures. Food costs have also been climbing all year. The latest official data shows that food inflation in November 2014 reached 3.1%.