Welcome to the Dollar War — the global battle that will decide the fate of America’s economy

The greenback has been facilitating the flow of money and goods around the world for over a century. Buying or selling oil? Usually done with dollars. Countries issuing government debt? Usually the price of those bonds is in US dollars. For generations, the greenback has been the safe haven for investors when markets crash and systems go haywire. The US even reminded everyone just how influential the buck is when it effectively froze Russia out of the global financial system with sanctions last year.

But if you listen to certain corners of the financial world and internet, the dollar’s reign as the world’s financial instrument of choice could be coming to an end. Motivated by a mix of politics and economics, countries from Israel and France to Russia and China have signaled they’re looking to start doing more business in a currency other than the US dollar. Central banks have also started to tiptoe away from the dollar, with currencies like the Chinese yuan, Japanese yen, and euro taking up a growing portion of global reserves.

These doom-and-gloom scenarios are overblown, financial experts told me, but in classic conspiracy fashion there’s a kernel of truth to the freak out if you look hard enough. The percentage of financial transactions done in US dollars has slipped over the past few decades, and the percentage of countries’ cash reserves that are held in dollars has been sliding.

Source: Business Insider Africa