Crime Against Humanity: Forms of Seigniorage, 6

From then on it’s just a matter of keeping the foreign want for dollars up, and to conversely keep the foreign demands for redemption of dollars down. Whatever failure in keeping the proverbial finger in the dyke would bring about the same imaginable consequences if the rest of the world begun to demand something in exchange for that mass of paper: gold, goods, foreclosures…
The finger in the dyke partially runs by inertia, out of the strong position of the United States at the end of the war, but as the reservoir of foreign confidence in United States’ credit rating begins to show signs of leakage, it get patched up. By hook or by crook. Some see fit to call imperialism the reinvestment of a fraction of the loot of international signiorage in such more or less routinary maintenance operations.
For instance, it would be instructive indeed to investigate why oil−producing countries did so inflexibly and for so long the United States the considerable favour to accept only dollars in payment for their much coveted “black gold”, and it would be as much instructive to investigate what favours did they get in return, and what their repercussions on the rest of us might be… Some insinuate that such favours may be not only comparable, but unspeakable as well.

Fact is that the “country more equal than others” exploits its exorbitant privilege and out of nothing creates, spends and lends abroad unprecedented amounts of its money, with which the sky appears to be the limit, and indefinitely so, too. Ironically, international seigniorage enables one to seduce the hearts and souls and the dreams of the robbed, too. An old forgotten joke goes, “If you’re good, I’ll take you to the restaurant to watch the lords who eat…” and you realise it must be a hungry parent trying to comfort a hungry child, between irony and naivety. One runs rather regularly across some critics of the United States calling them “imperialists”, and across the United States calling those critics “commies”; such criticisms can be summarised into a spoiled brat that not only fattens on food stolen from the others but fully intends to continue to live above his means, too.