Dollar crisis and the coming collapse of US global hegemony

"When the US moved off the gold standard in the early 1970s, the dollar more or less became a de facto oil-backed currency. In return for protection and the purchase of US treasury bonds, among other things, oil-producing Arab states agreed to conduct their oil transactions in the US dollar. The dollar may no longer have been backed by gold, but its worth was guaranteed by the strength of the US economy and the fact that it was closely tied to another precious commodity, this time oil. China has been implementing bilateral trade agreements with a number of countries, whereby trade is no longer conducted in dollars, but in local currencies.

Over the past few years, China and other emerging powers such as Russia have been making agreements to move away from the US dollar in international trade. The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) also plan to start using their own currencies when trading with each other. Russia and China have been using their own national currencies when trading with each other for more than a year. Under Saddam, Iraq was not using the dollar as the base currency for oil transactions. Neither is Iran right now. Libya's Muammar Gadhaffi was talking about using a gold backed dinar as the reserve currency for parts of Africa. And we know what subsequently happened to Libya and Iraq. In 2000, Iraq converted all its oil transactions to euros. When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, it returned oil sales from the euro to the dollar."