I'll open up the comments section for this one. From a Money Week.com story concerning five major trends in the world, number two concerns the "experimental money system" in which the following two paragraphs appear:

Worldwide, oil is calibrated in dollars. But what is the dollar calibrated in? More and more oil producers are beginning to ask. And the answer is that the dollar floats in the air like a willow leaf. If the winds are favorable, it stays up. If it gets caught in a downdraft, it falls.

We say that this is an`experimental' financial system, because nothing like it has ever existed. Not that this is the first experiment with lighter than air money. No, the U.S. Treasury did not invent pure-paper money. In the modern era, it has been tried many times – but never with happy results. And never, ever on such a grand scale. Now, practically every currency in the world is backed by dollars. And the dollar itself is backed by nothing. In fact, the whole world’s financial system rests on the shoulders of a single currency – which everyone knows is a shirker.