Well actually, in the original post, if the rich tourist was the government, the government would have laid down an IOU from China on the motel desk, or else just drawn an image of the $100 bill on blank paper.
USA dollars aren't back by a damn thing once we went off of the gold standard. They are only worth what people are willing to exchange merchandise and services for them. They are just PAPER that sellers of merchandise and services are free to determine their actual value AT WILL. Everybody is thinking the prices of everything is spiralling upwards out of control. That is not the situation at all. The VALUE of our MONEY is spiralling DOWNWARDS out of control! Unfortunately, the government has no incentive to stop this process. When you have runaway inflation and your money is becoming worth less and less every day, the natural reaction is to spend it as quickly as you can before if becomes less valuable. So what this does is to present a false picture of a thriving economy when people are spending their money. When in reality, people are DUMPING their money as quickly as they can. So our elected officials can point to this "booming" (literally) economy and pat themselves on the back at how effective their "stimulus" packages have been saving us from an economic depression. So what they are doing is pulling us from a burning bus and tossing us over a cliff instead.
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