Facing mounting inflation and the escalating cost of the Vietnam War, President Richard Nixon, on August 15, 1971, took the United States off the gold standard, which had been in place since 1944 and required that the Federal Reserve back all dollars in circulation with gold. The move amounted to a made-in-America double-digit devaluation, shocking the country's foreign creditors.

Nearly 40 years later, the dollar still dominates world trade. At the height of the financial crisis in 2008, investors fled to the dollar as a temporary safe haven. But the dollar has been falling steadily since 2002, and as the world economy recovered last year, dollar selling resumed, reviving doubts about how long it could remain the world's unrivaled reserve currency.

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