Comment by kortilla

That doesn’t matter. In modern forex markets you can convert 50 million yen to USD. Do a trade with another country for EUR or whatever. Then convert it back to USD the same day.

These markets are extremely liquid and the longer term trends of the USD value are irrelevant because players can move in and out so quickly. They can even preemptively take short positions or buy options on futures markets to completely derisk an event while holding USD.

This is why “petrodollar is good” analysis in modern forex is completely off-base. At this point it’s become a great flag to indicate someone who doesn’t understand forex and trade at all.

Of all of the things valuable to the US, the petrodollar is about as far down as renaming the Gulf of Mexico the gulf of America.