Lisa Stranger

2026-03-25 14:41:16

I periodically get pushback on "petrodollars"... they are real, and we are boned #ThanksNixon

Iran, the $39 trillion national debt and dedollarization: How Trump exposed America's Achilles Heel | Fortune

The year was 1974 and President Richard Nixon had dispatched his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to Saudi Arabia to strike a secret deal. Three years earlier, in August 1971, Nixon had already administered the “shock” that ended the Bretton Woods system governing global finance since World War II — suspending the dollar’s convertibility to gold in a televised address that transformed every major currency overnight. By 1973, the system had fully unraveled.

The world wouldn’t know for another 50 years what Nixon and Kissinger replaced it with, striking a deal that would quietly govern the global economy for the next half-century. Riyadh agreed to price and trade its oil in U.S. dollars and channel its petroleum windfalls back into U.S. Treasury bonds; in return, Washington promised military aid, equipment, and security guarantees—a deal that would quietly govern the global economy for the next half-century.

The existence of this secret agreement wasn’t even publicly confirmed until 2016, when Bloomberg News filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the National Archives.

https://fortune.com/2026/03/24/iran-hormuz-petrodollar-national-debt-trump/

backup: https://archive.ph/unQtb

Iran, the $39 trillion national debt and dedollarization: How Trump exposed America’s Achilles Heel in Hormuz

With the national debt at $39 trillion and dollar dominance already at a 30-year low, the petrodollar system is more visible—and threatened—than ever.

^{Nick Lichtenberg (Fortune)}