9

February

Reserve Currency Wars, the Dollar and Gold

9 February 2011  The Financial Times

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Back in the 1960s, envious of America’s ability to borrow easily abroad, French finance minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing denounced the reserve currency status of the dollar as an “exorbitant privilege”. A few years later, weakened by US fiscal profligacy, the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system anchored on the US currency collapsed.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c1cd29c2-33c9-11e0-b1ed-00144feabdc0.html