Central banks

Tuesday

John Pietro

The dollar is here to stay

Reports of the death of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency are greatly exaggerated. Fortunately for America, while the dollar is by no means unsinkable, it will not be toppled anytime soon. Threats exist, but rather than coming from abroad, to paraphrase Lincoln, they spring up among us. How the US manages its economy will largely be the determinant factor in the dollar’s continued supremacy. Currently, the dollar makes up about 58 percent of foreign currency reserves worldwide, well ahead of its competitors. The next closest currency is the euro at 20 percent, and then the yen and pound sterling, both at about 5 percent — China’s renminbi is at a paltry 3 percent (just ahead of a real powerhouse, the Canadian dollar).

dollar debt

Tuesday

Ross Clark

Has Covid accelerated the cashless society?

From our UK edition

Time is, I fear, running out. Running out, that is, to avoid handing to a small number of multinational corporations our right to buy and sell things. Running out to prevent governments and central banks helping themselves to our savings, by means of negative interest rates. The payments industry is closing in on its target of driving cash out of circulation and instigating cashless payments as the only way of doing business. That, at least, is the conclusion one might reach from reading a report by Worldpay: the Global Payments Report 2021. It claims that cash payments in UK shops in 2020 made up 13.4 per cent of total payments, down from 27.4 per cent in 2019. By 2024, it predicts, they will be down to just 6.9 per cent. By the same year it will be down to just 0.