So, basically, it would be stronger that other "minor" crises. With a possible rearrangement of the worldwide used currency, and a back to precious metals as a way to save money for some time until another for of currency ends up being reliable enough to be used.
And, logically, this crisis would bring lots of unemployment and a recession. Hmm.
Well, except for the part in which we exchange green papers for another kind of paper (after temporarily hoarding a yellowish shinny metal, but that's not new at all), it seems pretty much like any other crisis.
Exchanging greens for another currency isn't great news in the long term for the US. You see when other people need to pay for things they have to actually create wealth to pay for it. You need to produce food or minerals or consumer goods or something, and trade that for what you want. You could try and print more money, but if you do the other money you already have is less valuable and you don't actually get anywhere.
But the US is special, its debts are in its own currency, meaning if it prints more and devalues its own currency, the debt is devalued along with it and the debtor (China) doesn't get paid back the real value they handed out. As such they have an interest in keeping the currency strong, and they do this by making demand for the US dollar, by buying it. So while the US prints more money, China procures it on the backs on an exploited workforce. The US never has to work again, it can just print forever! Right?
Not exactly, because China likes to use the money it bought to do things. This floods markets with poisonous US dollars that will drop once the states defaults. This is why some places like Mexico have measures in place to try and reduce US currency in their economy. They have had an exchange cap since 2010. In the end accounting tricks are only smoke and mirrors, and there are no free rides. When confidence starts to fade the US economy suffers, problems come up, and things turn sour.
All this is pretty standard and expected, and recoverable.
But then what? What does the US do without the power of a reserve currency? How do you even rebuild from that without the infrastructure in place? The solution
might be to take what they have and dump it into health, education, infrastructure, what ever is hard to move around electronically, and then bite the bullet and go bankrupt,