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Timothy Noah: Why does the world put up with the dollar?
By Timothy Noah
The New Republic, New York
Monday, August 10, 2026
The most powerful tool of the American imperium is not, as is generally supposed, its military, but rather its currency.
Other nations (China, India) possess more troops, but none possesses more legal tender. There were 57,000,000,000 dollar-denominated bills in circulation last year. By comparison, euro-denominated bills -- the world's second-most-widely circulated currency, minted not by one nation but by 21—numbered 31,000,000,000.
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The combined monetary value of the 57 billion greenbacks was $2.4 trillion; for the 31 billion euro notes, $1.6 trillion.
And that's just paper money. How much of your net worth resides in your wallet? In our increasingly cashless society, I sometimes go months absentmindedly forgetting to pull dead-tree dollars out of my ATM. Serious money resides in banks and other financial institutions.
Economists speak of "reserve currencies," or currencies held around the world by central banks and other government institutions like our Federal Reserve. These reserves can be paper currency or paper bonds or gold bars, but mostly they're just blips on a computer screen.
Well over half of this money, or about $7 trillion, consists of U.S. dollars. Euros account for less than $3 trillion. Most international trade occurs in dollars too, not just in the United States but throughout the world, and when foreign corporations hedge against currency fluctuations, they do so overwhelmingly with dollars.
In effect, the dollar is not merely American currency; it's a global currency too. ...
... For the remainder of the commentary:
https://newrepublic.com/article/213742/us-dollar-erratic-global-economy
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