Fiat has a feudal age connotation to it. The USD is not fiat as you are able to do FX trading easily and more importantly, it's backed by the goods and service

Fiat has a feudal age connotation to it. The USD is not fiat as you are able to do FX trading easily and more importantly, it's backed by the goods and services available in the United States or denominated in USD (eg. oil). So it's value is very much perception based. Being the world's premier currency it's pretty damn safe, but if there was a widespread loss of confidence in the U.S. for whatever reason, the wealth of the U.S. relative to other countries could crater as a result. This is why a couple years ago when the Republicans were messing with not extending the debt ceiling was playing with fire. In my opinion it was the dumbest thing I've ever seen in modern politics, and think of the competition for that statement. I imagine that the root cause of that foolishness is that some of the Republican politicians think of a country's debt like it's a household debt, when they are nothing alike.