An insightful HackerNews comment about the extraordinary privilege to the US of owning the world reserve currency.

It's something that we take for granted, but is an extraordinary source of power.

The things that produce that power are a collective belief across the world and a game-theoretic equilibrium.

It allows the US to do things no other country could do, and defy gravity.

Those kinds of equilibria can be in super-critical states, where they appear stable but are actually on the precipice of an explosive avalanche.