Conquer Club

I'm sure a lot of countries would love to, but don't really wanna end up like Iraq, Libya et al...

The US dollar is slowly losing its status as the world's reserve currency. Pre-2008 something like 75% of global foreign exchange reserves were USD, now it's a little under 60%.

It's not that people have some sort of specific problem with the dollar. It's just that US exports are a smaller share of international trade than they used to be, and at the same time it's increasingly easy to trade using a wider range of other nations's currencies, without needing to first convert those currencies to dollars.

China would need to liberalise its control of the Renminbi if it wanted to displace the dollar as the world's primary reserve currency, but if it did then it eventually would.

bigtoughralf wrote:The US dollar is slowly losing its status as the world's reserve currency. Pre-2008 something like 75% of global foreign exchange reserves were USD, now it's a little under 60%.

it's true!

bigtoughralf wrote:It's not that people have some sort of specific problem with the dollar. It's just that US exports are a smaller share of international trade than they used to be, and at the same time it's increasingly easy to trade using a wider range of other nations's currencies, without needing to first convert those currencies to dollars.

True, especially the second half

bigtoughralf wrote:China would need to liberalise its control of the Renminbi if it wanted to displace the dollar as the world's primary reserve currency, but if it did then it eventually would.

lolololol, i was beginning to wonder if this was really a ralf post but then you added this.

China made up 30-40% of the entire world's GDP until the Opium Wars. Imperialism might have burst that bubble for a century or so but the seesaw is already tipping rapidly back in China's direction:
It's inevitable.

bigtoughralf wrote:China made up 30-40% of the entire world's GDP until the Opium Wars. Imperialism might have burst that bubble for a century or so but the seesaw is already tipping rapidly back in China's direction:

Click image to enlarge.

It's inevitable.

I thought we were talking about currencies not GDP? China's share of global GDP is surely likely to continue to grow, but the idea that France and the USA are going to start trading using the Yuan is a little far fetched no?

I never said they would. I'm talking about which currency will be the primary reserve currency, not the only reserve currency (which no currency has ever been).

mookiemcgee wrote:

bigtoughralf wrote:The US dollar is slowly losing its status as the world's reserve currency. Pre-2008 something like 75% of global foreign exchange reserves were USD, now it's a little under 60%.

it's true!

yes, it's true!
but the dollar will not lose its leadership as the main reserve currency in the world for another 50-100 years