It was fairly obvious at the time that Nixon was destroying the currency and the US dollar would then be capable of decline below which something else or someone else could eventually take its place in a significant amount of transactions.<p>It was not widely forseen the decline would be bad enough for it to be something that somebody just made up one day.
The US was exporting the cost of the Vietnam War, but the Europeans stopped buying treasuries and China wasn't yet buying. Fast forward to 2003 when the Iraq enterprise was financed with Chinese dollars.<p>The adage: If you have trouble paying your $100,000 loan, you have a problem; if you have trouble paying your $100,000,000 loan, your bank has a problem.<p>Then there's Trump's loans from Deutsche Bank coming due soon.