Bluestein chose journalism as a career partly because his friends were going to law school, and he reasoned there would be a glut of lawyers, so studying economics gave him a competitive advantage in getting hired as a journalist.

Banks in the early US were not uniformly regulated, and merchants faced uncertainty about whether banks actually held the specie they claimed to hold.

Bluestein studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Oxford University, and described the economics training there as extremely theoretical and highfalutin, focused on abstract concepts like equity and debt rather than stocks and bonds.

Bluestein's motivation for writing about crises stems partly from genuine concern that analysis and public debate might reduce future crises, but also from the fact that crises provide compelling subject matter for books and journalism, creating a complex ethical situation that requires walking a difficult line.

The creation of the Federal Reserve in 1913 was the critical institutional step that transformed the dollar from a collection of private bank obligations into a unified national currency, because a central bank can enforce uniformity of value and redemption across the system through law and regulation, rather than relying on individual bank reputation.

The US became the world's largest economy around 1870, but because it lacked a central bank and federal monetary authority until 1913, the dollar did not become the dominant international currency until the 1920s after World War I, when US banks began expanding into Europe and the Fed gave them new powers to establish branches and subsidiaries abroad.

Bluestein found journalism about economics rewarding because it involved writing about subjects that people know are important but don't intuitively grasp, which is less glamorous than White House or style section reporting but more meaningful.

Federal Reserve notes bear the text 'This note is legal tender for all obligations public and private,' which is the government's declaration that payment in dollars satisfies any contractual obligation.

SWIFT is only a messaging system for confirming that international payments are happening; it does not transmit or settle funds and can be replaced by other secure communication methods if necessary, making it less critical to the dollar system than commonly assumed.

Reserve currency status refers specifically to the dollar's special role as the currency held by central banks in their foreign currency reserves (about 60% of all foreign currency reserves), but this is only the beginning of the dollar's dominance—its broader role spans international trade, finance, borrowing, and hedging.

The Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s brought the world close to the precipice and demonstrated the catastrophic spillover effects of currency crises when a major economy like South Korea (the 11th largest economy at the time) ran out of hard currency reserves.

Double-digit inflation in the 1970s-80s was perhaps the most serious structural threat to the dollar's dominance because it is fundamentally irrational for foreign actors to hold or accept dollars if their purchasing power is eroding rapidly.

The 2008 financial crisis represented a legitimate crisis of confidence in the dollar system because the crisis was caused by dollar dominance and exposed the dangers of depending on a single currency, leading to justified international complaints about the dollar's hegemonic role.

Losing dollar dominance would be less important than avoiding catastrophic events like a full-scale war with China, and policy makers should not prioritize dollar dominance over preventing such catastrophes.

Bluestein's first book was about the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, covering Thailand, Indonesia, Korea, Russia, and Brazil.

Treasury market illiquidity or dysfunction represents a vulnerability to dollar dominance, as evidenced by disruptions that occurred in recent history ('just a few days ago').

Jack Borman, the top civil servant at the IMF, learned during Thanksgiving that Korea was almost bankrupt and almost out of hard currency, requiring him to spend all day on a conference call deciding how to rescue the 11th largest economy in the world from potential default.

Paul Warburg was the most crucial figure in the creation of the Federal Reserve, along with Senator Aldrich and other members of Congress who were responsible for the legislation.

American lawmakers traveled to Europe to ask for advice on creating a central bank, and Europeans responded that it was stupid that the world's largest economy didn't have one.

The rise of cryptocurrency in 2019-2020 was a trigger for Bluestein's interest in writing King Dollar because it raised questions about whether alternative currencies might replace the dollar.