One obvious outcome to the move was a bout of inflation that led to higher interest rates for debt issues - but, obviously, now we're running with historically low interest rates which is bad for the lenders. Since you're probably referring to the petrodollar warfare hypothesis when discussing the "moneyed elite", I can at least say that it's likely wrong. The author of the book claimed that there was a secret agreement in 1974 with Saudi Arabia to only accept dollars for oil payments - which is wrong on many levels.

For one, the Saudi currency was already pegged to the dollar per agreement with the IMF by 1960. In this article you will read how difficult it was for Saudi Arabia to maintain a gold/silver standard, leading to economic problems - and how they eventually shifted over to paper money. They relied on the dollar as a reserve currency because Standard Oil of California could not find enough gold to pay off the royalties for Aramco's operations, leading to a certain compromise.

That compromise shows the weakness of gold, or any, standards for currency use. By not knowing the true value of natural resources in the ground - a proper measure in the finite quantity of available gold is impossible - leading to a lack of "wealth" to trade for wealth. In an Adam Smith type vision of growth the economy would inevitably revert to a barter economy, or be subject to the whims of the gold hoarders. This defeats the purpose of currency.

The second reason it's unlikely there was a "secret" agreement is that Saudi Arabia didn't actually own their own oil - they only acquired a 25% equity share in 1972, and had no control over the distribution networks through which their oil was sold. They accepted their royalty payments in whatever currency was available, it being convenient that they sold their oil to American companies if they pegged their currency to the dollar. The American distributors saved them the hassle of having to convert a host of other currencies to dollars for them.

However, the inflation caused by abolishing the gold standard did raise some concerns in the Middle East. While the petrodollar warfare book states that there was an "unpublished" proposal to price the barrel of oil with an exchange rate based on a basket of the currencies of the G-10 countries; Fadhil Chalabi referred to this in 2010 as the Second Geneva Amendment to the Tehran Agreement of 1971. Indeed, the same model works with most currency exchanges, as national currencies are usually compared to such a basket of strong industrial currencies. Unless I'm mistaken, this offers a competitive element which keeps nations more or less honest with their currency supplies - and is likely the reason for the continued strong liquidity of the US dollar.

In short - it was a good move. If nothing else, the mathematics behind bond issues for a deflating currency would be so annoying as to create an inefficient capital market. This is the primary reason why bitcoin will never be more than a hobby method to make payments.