The mighty dollar, ordinarily a safe haven during times of market-based stress, is falling apart and its ongoing year-to-date slide is pointing to a much bigger problem for all U.S. assets.

That's because the weakening greenback is being accompanied by a dramatic selloff in U.S. government debt and whipsaw action in all three major stock indexes DJIA SPX COMP on Friday, following a historic rally and big selloffs in equities over the past week. Such coinciding moves - falling dollar, bonds and equities - like the ones seen this week are "rare, ugly and worrying," according to a team at Evercore ISI, a research arm of of New York-based investment-banking advisory firm Evercore.

On Friday, the greenback touched its lowest levels in two to three years, as tariff-driven volatility continued to grip U.S. financial markets. Analysts and strategists were grasping for historical comparisons to what investors and traders worldwide are currently witnessing.

One episode that comes to mind is the Nixon shock of more than a half-century ago. That was when President Richard Nixon introduced a series of actions that prioritized the U.S. economy, such as a decision to delink the dollar from gold (GC00) without warning in order to protect the greenback from attacks by international speculators. One unintended consequence of Nixon's actions is that they were seen as the catalyst for the stagflation, or weak economic growth coupled with higher inflation, which gripped the U.S. during the 1970's.

"What we are going through now is worse than when former President Nixon took us off the gold standard in August 1971," said Marc Chandler, the New York-based chief market strategist for Bannockburn Global Forex. "The biggest damage right now is to the U.S. brand," he said, likening the harm done by tariff-driven volatility to the Coca-Cola Co.'s $(KO)$ 1985 move toward "New Coke," a reformulated version of its famous drink, which led to consumer backlash.

"There is talk of a capital strike against the U.S., with many people suggesting there's pressure from foreign investors selling American assets," Chandler said via phone. In addition, there are questions on whether the U.S. will be unable to preserve its role as the global leader, he said. All of this is occurring as hedge funds have been in the process of unwinding a popular strategy known as the basis trade, and this unwinding is likely contributing to the recent jumps in Treasury yields.

As of afternoon trading in New York, the ICE U.S. Dollar Index DXY, a measure of the U.S. currency against a basket of six other major currencies, was down 0.5% at 100.37 after briefly touching its lowest level of the past two or three years earlier in the session. It is down almost 8% this year.

Meanwhile, Treasury yields were spiking, with the 10-year yield BX:TMUBMUSD10Y up by more than 10 basis points at 4.5% and the 30-year yield BX:TMUBMUSD30Y on track to climb for a fifth straight session, as U.S. government debt aggressively sold off. All three major stock indexes swung between gains and losses after ending Thursday's session with their worst performances in almost a week.

Trump's midweek decision to offer most countries, except for China, a lower 10% tariff for 90 days produced the biggest point gains on records for U.S. stocks, but the good cheer didn't last long.

On Thursday and Friday, traders and investors were preoccupied with the still-existing trade war between the U.S. and China, with the latter turning up the heat and raising its tariffs on American goods to 125%. The U.S. has clarified that its own 145% tariff on China breaks down to 125% based on retaliatory measures and another 20% related to fentanyl.

In a note on Friday, Krishna Guha, Evercore ISI's vice chairman, and others said the "rare, ugly and worrying combination" of moves seen this week in the dollar, bonds and equities comes as market participants are "pressing for a bigger U-turn with either a complete cessation of tariffs ex-China, or negotiations with China, or both."

"Currency lower, bonds lower, and stocks lower spell capital outflows, which interact with hedge-fund deleveraging," said the team at Evercore ISI. "There is no global scramble for dollar liquidity, global investors are selling dollar assets instead." Moreover, "this is not about stagflation. ... It reflects evaporating U.S. growth exceptionalism and the reduced attraction, at the margin, of dollar assets for reserve purposes amid erratic U.S. decision-making," among other things.

U.S. exceptionalism is the term used to describe the unique elements of the American economy and financial system which make it more attractive than elsewhere in the world. And at the moment, the attractiveness of the U.S. dollar appears to be fading fast.

"The damage to the USD has been done: the market is reassessing the structural attractiveness of the dollar as the world's global reserve currency and is undergoing a process of rapid dedollarization," the researcher said. "Nowhere is this more evident than the continued and combined collapse in the currency and U.S. bond market as this week comes to a close."