The US dollar still retains a disproportionately large representation in international trade transactions, official reserves and exchange rate regimes. This is largely due to the many institutional arrangements and incumbencies which remain from the Bretton Woods era of 1944 to 1971 when the gold-linked dollar provided the formal anchor for the world monetary system.

Now, though, this privileged, inherited status of the paper dollar is under threat from the falling relative economic size of the US and its cyclical influence and the scale of the excesses that very privilege has allowed.

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