...it's currency. When the dollar was a gold or silver coin (which is the only kind permitted by the constitution) it was money. When the paper form arrived, it became currency backed by silver and gold. When it was stripped of that backing (first by FDR then finally by Nixon) it became a fiat currency - backed only by a promise of more (but less valuable) dollars.

The government doesn't issue money. It asks the Federal Reserve to do that it, which is a bank, not a governmental agency. They used to tell us how much money was being printed in a report called the M3. They stopped printing that report last year...to "save money!" There are other ways of determining the M3, but it's way above my head.

And the USA is not the only place other countries can use our currency. It doesn't have to return to the USA. The Bretton Woods agreement in 1944 made the US dollar the world reserve currency. It is also the primary currency in the oil biz, AKA: the PetroDollar.

Nixon partially changed the system to pay for the war, but there were other issues. While US citizens could not demand gold for paper dollars, other countries could. With a slowly rising gold price, other countries were starting to drain our gold reserves with their demands for gold payment, at a loss to the US. What Nixon did was to declare that we would no longer pay our debts with gold. They thought that would drive the value of gold down. It had the opposite effect.

But perhaps you are right, maybe we shouldn't talk about the dollar's Achilles' heel.