A closer look
During the 2008 financial meltdown, the US Federal Reserve quietly became the secret sugar daddy for the entire European continent. Because the global economy runs on US dollars, foreign banks who had made terrible bets suddenly realized they didn't have the literal currency required to pay their debts. Central bank swap lines allowed the Fed to digitally print billions of dollars and trade them to the European Central Bank overnight. It completely bypassed standard foreign exchange markets to stop a cascading global apocalypse before the public even woke up.
