It’s evidence of how far alarm about the decline of the dollar’s global role has spread that even Liz Truss, whose salad days as UK prime minister lasted less than seven weeks, cites it as one of her major fears. Then again, given Truss’s record on understanding financial markets and delivering a stable currency, you might also say that’s strong evidence that the concerns are misplaced.Indeed, although there seems to be a fresh round of concern that upward pressure on prices, geopolitical risk and the US’s foreign entanglements will drag the currency down and reduce its global influence, so far there isn’t much evidence of it. The dollar strengthened this week as forecasts of Federal Reserve interest rate cuts were scaled back in light of unexpectedly high inflation. It’s a currency’s normal reaction to interest rate differentials. If there were fears US inflation was getting out of control and shaking confidence in monetary policy we might expect to see it weakening, not strengthening, and the prospects for American growth underperforming rather than outperforming other economies.
在英國首相的位子上只待了7周、還沒有一棵球生菜堅持得久的里茲•特拉斯(Liz Truss)，將美元全球地位的下降列爲她的主要擔憂之一，這證明了此事令人擔憂的程度。不過話又說回來，鑑於特拉斯當時的政策反映出她不懂金融市場、導致英鎊大幅貶值，你或許也可以說，這有力地證明了對美元全球地位下降的擔憂是多餘的。