alt Hacker NewsI think we're talking less about the aspect of Bismarck where he won 3 big wars and lost none, and more about the part where he set up a delicate system that was maybe too complex for his successors to maintain, especially under idiosyncratic leaders. We're not talking about financial crises. Bismarck did not stop the Panic of 1873 (in fact, you could wave your hands and argue he indirectly caused it).
As far as "who set up the US empire, in all its complexity?", I'd argue for the 4 guys I named in my other comment, but your list might differ. And if you're just interested in the dollar system per se, I'd probably go with Harry Dexter White, who strangely enough turned out to be a Soviet spy.
Oh, and if you want a pretty clear analogy from Bismarck's system to earlier US monetary history: Benjamin Strong got the Federal Reserve System up and running and figured out a bunch of the right tricks, but he died in 1928 without getting his successors up to speed on how to run things. They failed miserably in next couple years. Bad timing!
Your list and the one above (e.g. with General Marshall, etc) are more illustrative & aligned with developing US Hegemony than the 20th Century Presidents. It seems to me the US presidents have been drawing down hegemony assets since JFK.
It's just that the USA was so dominant after WW2 that it took about a century for the structure to collapse.
A better model than seeing Trump as a wrecking ball, is seeing him as a high stakes gambler, with middling skills -- in the same way that George W Bush made a big bet on the middle east and lost the chips.