https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system You got it, under Bretton Woods the US dollar was no longer backed by gold. It was instead made into the international monetary unit every participant country must use to purchase oil on the global market. Making it the global reserve currency, it allowed the fed to offshore the inflation of money printing to the rest of the world and obfuscate the constant degradation of the value of the dollar and it kept the US economy in a bit of a bubble. Those chickens are coming home to roost.