Yes the federal reserve note is "tied" to oil in international markets, calling it the Petro dollar, but the actual currency issued is issued with interest, thus it represents a debt. It has no real intrisic value. When the federal reserve does a "quantitative easing" or "stimulation" of trillions of notes, they are not issuing those respective to any amount of oil available. I believe they have done the quantitative easing scam about 5 or 6 times so far. Quantitative easing or stimulation basically means "dollar devaluation". That's why gold is like $1700 now. Gold in the year 1800 was like 19.39/oz then in 1913 (The first 100 year charter of the federal reserve was signed) it was somthin like 19.94/oz Then in 1972ish nixon took us off the gold standard completely and that is where the hockey stick graph comes in to $1700/oz Following Other stable commodities can show the trend of devaluation. Ex: A nice suit (I'm talking a nice rock star suit) in year 1800 cost about $19.39ish or an oz of gold. A nice suit (I'm talking a nice rock star suit) now costs about $1700 or an oz of gold. See gold is not expensive the value of the "dollar" is just devalued. This happens with all "fiat" (currency backed by nothing) currencies. This is the same as the German Papiermark durring the weimar republic in the 1920s, or the Zimbabwe notes now. https://capital-com.cdn.ampproject.org/i/s/capital.com/files/imgs/articles/750xx/[Infographics]%20Gold%20price%20history%20.png