20th-c orders

War finance

❓ Why does war break gold convertibility?

States need resources faster than tax collection and slower than they fear political revolt. Printing and suspending convertibility finance war. Chapter 9 traces how major powers abandoned honest metal links under wartime pressure—an early modern template for “emergency” money that rarely fully returns.

Bretton Woods

❓ What was Bretton Woods, and why did it fail?

Post-WWII order: other currencies pegged to the US dollar; dollar tied to gold for official holders. It exported dollar liquidity while constraining (in theory) US issuance. Triffin-style tensions and US domestic choices produced more dollars than gold confidence could bear. August 1971 (Nixon shock) closed the gold window—completion of the speed-gap logic into pure claim money for the center.

Petrodollar

❓ How did dollar demand persist after gold?

Oil and commodities invoicing, deep US capital markets, and network effects recycled dollar demand (Chapter 11). This is not mystical; it is path-dependent infrastructure. It gives the US seigniorage and sanctions power—and the “heavy head” costs of being the safe asset supplier (Chapter 13).

Chaos to the periphery

❓ What does “pushing chaos to the periphery” mean?

When the core runs soft policy, adjustment often hits floating/emerging currencies via capital flows, commodity prices, and dollar funding squeezes (Chapter 12). Hyperinflations and serial devaluations cluster outside the reserve core—not because periphery people are uniquely foolish, but because they lack the deepest claim-ledger network effects.

2022–2026 update: reserves after sanctions

❓ Did weaponizing reserves kill the dollar?

Not in the data so far. Fed staff notes using IMF COFER still put the dollar near ~58% of disclosed official FX reserves in 2024, far above the euro; shares drift slowly with diversification into smaller currencies, not a collapse (Federal Reserve FEDS Note, July 2025). IMF COFER updates through 2025Q2 show exchange-rate effects moving headline shares; exchange-rate-adjusted dollar share is little changed. Sanctions on Russia raised the political question; substitutes remain limited because alternative deep safe assets are scarce.

Multipolar sketches

❓ What neutral settlement might look like?

Alden discusses multipolar reserves and neutral assets (gold, possibly bitcoin, synthetic international units). Plausible paths include rival fiat blocs with frictions, not automatic utopia. Unresolved (U2 in ledger).