I think this is done on purpose and it's not new, it's been a while since they started to print like crazies as if there was no tomorrow. How many times have we heard about those "raise the debt ceiling" debates? Maybe something like a dozen of times, I stopped to count, most people just regard it as yet another round of formal talks, nobody's considering it a real issue these days So for that reason, I think they decided to dump the dollar some 2 decades ago or so, when they openly and shamelessly started the printing press to infinity program known as QE essentially So I believe, but that's just an opinion, and I can be wrong, that they have a replacement in store, a digital one