At any time, in nearly any country, its role as the ultimate safe-haven currency and the universally accepted standard of economic value has been beyond question. How the dollar became the one to rule them all. At the turn of the twentieth century, when the dollar was coming into its own, it was blessed by limited currency competition.

The sterling of the British Empire had run its course and during the Great War, Europe's leading powers razed each other's economic assets to the ground. The US on the other hand, had plenty going for it. It assumed the role of the global export hub with a state-of-the-art manufacturing infrastructure; the mass inflows of physical gold it received bestowed global reverence upon the Federal Reserve; the newly federalized Internal Revenue Service (IRS) enjoyed access to a deep well of taxpayers maintaining robust dollar demand; and the unmatched depth of its bond markets catapulted the greenback to new heights. In more recent decades, a much darker element has also come to the forefront. David Graeber, anthropologist and noted author, wrote in his 'Debt – The first 5,000 years', …U.S. military predominance…No other government has ever had anything remotely like this sort of capability. In fact, a case could well be made that it is this very power that holds the entire world monetary system, organized around the dollar, together.