Canada announced the death of the penny last Thursday.

“Pennies take up too much space on our dressers at home,” Finance Minister Jim Flaherty told the House of Commons. “They take up far too much time for small businesses trying to grow and create jobs.”

Flaherty’s lighthearted comments highlight a dangerous problem with the Canadian dollar. It just can’t seem to hold its value.

But it is a problem faced by virtually all the world’s currencies. Everywhere you look, money seems to be on a race to the bottom. Canadian dollar, U.S. dollar, kroner, pound, euro, yen, yuan—they all are losing purchasing power at a startling rate. It now costs 1.6 Canadian pennies to mint a penny (zinc plus labor costs).

Consequently, the Canadian government loses $11 million per year making money. No money tree here—just anti-money.

There was a time when minting money actually made nations money. Many nations, including the United States, Canada and Australia, actually minted half-penny coins. And these coins could be used to purchase real goods.

In 1970, at the age of 77, Herbert W. Armstrong wrote about how as a boy his mother had asked him to “[g]o to the meat shop and get a dime’s worth of round steak. And tell the butcher to put in plenty of suet.” A “dime’s worth” meant each person in his family received a modest-sized piece of meat, plus plenty of gravy for the potatoes.

In times past, the dollar certainly stretched farther. Mr. Armstrong quoted the Labor Department’s figures for how much $5 would have purchased in 1913: 15 pounds of potatoes, 10 pounds of flour, 5 pounds of sugar, 5 pounds of chuck roast, 3 pounds of round steak, 3 pounds of rice, 2 pounds each of cheese and bacon, and a pound each of butter and coffee; that money would also get you two loaves of bread, 4 quarts of milk and a dozen eggs. “This would leave you with 2 cents for candy,” he wrote.

Wow. Today, $5 might buy you 1 pound of round steak.

The world’s devaluing currencies are a symptom of a very sick financial system. Expect much more upheaval ahead. And for your money to become worth a lot less.