Bush declared martial law in June of 2008. This was after going nuclear on Iran and the chaos surrounding the oil shock that followed soon after. People had said he’d been planning the Iran move for a while, but the media kept pointing out how much of a threat Iran was so I guess we needed to act. He didn’t have any conventional forces or weaponry because we’d become over-extended in Iraq and Afghanistan so he went nuclear. What came next wasn’t clear for many years and is still disputed today. All I know for sure is that oil become scarce in a real hurry. China removed the Yuan/dollar peg, called in its massive store of US Treasury bonds and sent the greenback into freefall.