You're describing this process is going to be incredibly smooth, but you need to consider that what you have written actually has massive political and economic

You're describing this process is going to be incredibly smooth, but you need to consider that what you have written actually has massive political and economical implications... > But before they do that, they will create a new currency, the USDNew, replace every existing $ with USDNew on a one to one basis, and then pay back their debt in old dollars. Wait a minute, are you saying that the US is going to default on their own currency? OK, then be ready for every country to instantly not trust the US dollar anymore, leading to a devastating devaluation of the dollar and import prices skyrocketing off the charts. And guess what: the US, having gone through serious amounts of deindustrialization and being used to rely on foreign imports, now doesn't know how to make things anymore, so expect hyperinflation across all sorts of manufactured goods, many of which are needed in people's daily lives and jobs! You can't just expect national production capacity to quickly catch up to demand; industry takes actual time to rebuild itself. Also, I think people underestimate the fact that the current strength of the US dollar isn't really backed by exports - it's because of the US's massive military / political strength that can crush any small country if they do not obey the ideology of 'their' free market. For example, through the petrodollar system they have been able to force oil (the most important commodity) in the Middle East countries to be only be bought in US dollars, in return for military protection. And any country that tries to deviate from this system will be fucked (for example, Iraq, Iran, and now probably Venezuela, who all got fucked after trying to sell their oil in something other than US dollars). This new petrodollar system has forced US dollar demand to skyrocket throughout the entire world, to replace the previous Bretton Woods system that ran on gold. The verdict is: the US dollar will only devalue if the current neoliberal ruling class of the US decides to forfeit any military intervention and policing throughout the world to establish markets beneficial for them (especially the Middle East). But I think the current ruling class is never going to give up on this, so a political change of hands (through either democratic or non-democratic means) would be necessary. And that's where all the political implications are. > So basically in the worst case situation the US would have enjoyed decades of benefits for the dollar hegemony, and will now take the advantages of those benefits to compete inehat will be a slightly more even global economic market. The problem is the 'take the advantages of' part - if your US dollars become toilet paper, and you do not have the infrastructure to build things, then you really don't have anything to take advantage of (after losing your World Police (TM) status). At least the US still has a shit-ton of natural resources to begin with though. But really, what you should immediately focus after the total devaluation of the US dollar would not be about rebuilding but dealing with widespread unrest and an actual imminent civil war.