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The decline of dollar hegemony. But other options are also fragile.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
The world’s share of foreign exchange reserves denominated in US dollars – these are financial assets such as US Treasury securities, US corporate bonds, US mortgage-backed securities, etc., held by foreign central banks – fell to 59.2% in the second quarter, according to IMF data on the composition of official foreign reserves (COFER) released today. In the fourth quarter of last year, the dollar’s share hit its lowest level in 25 years at 58.9%. And at first glance, the dollar continues its long, slow and uneven downward trajectory (2014 is the start of quarterly data, earlier data is annual):
The Fed is a reckless money printer, and the US government, which had meddled in deficit spending for years, has gone mad since March 2020. But central banks and governments of other major developed economies have also participated. to this program, some even worse. And so, the pandemic did not change the relationship and left intact the long-term downward trajectory of the dollar as the dominant reserve currency.
Since 2014, the dollar’s share has fallen by 6.8 percentage points, from 66% to 59.2%, on average almost 1 percentage point per year. At the rate of the past six years, the dollar’s share of the world’s reserve currencies would drop below 50% in about a decade.
The Fed’s own holdings of dollar-denominated assets – primarily $ 5.4 trillion in Treasury securities and $ 2.5 trillion in MBS – are not included in global foreign exchange reserves. The ECB’s holdings of securities denominated in euros either. The holdings of the Bank of Japan of securities denominated in yen, etc. are also not included. Only assets of each central bank that are denominated in foreign currencies are included.
The arrival of the euro did not help the dollar: two decades of decline
In 2001, the dollar’s share of foreign exchange reserves climbed to 71.5%, after which the last episode of the long-term decline of the dollar began. It is also the period of the full arrival of the euro. The dollar’s share has since fallen by 12.3 percentage points, to 59.2% currently.
But there has been a dramatic drop in the dollar’s share of world reserve currencies that began in 1978 and bottomed out in 1991, reflecting years of massive inflation, in which the dollar lost about half. on his part. It then recovered until the arrival of the euro (% end of year share, except 2021 = Q2):
The exchange rates have something to do with it.
Central banks hold foreign exchange reserves denominated in various currencies. For example, the People’s Bank of China holds about $ 3.1 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, denominated in all kinds of currencies. Of that amount, $ 1.1 trillion is in US Treasury securities denominated in USD. The remaining 2,000 billion in reserves are made up of undisclosed amounts of securities denominated in yen, euros, etc. The IMF, when compiling its COFER data, converts all non-dollar amounts into USD.
Thus, the dollar’s share in total foreign exchange reserves depends to some extent on the exchange rates of these other currencies against the US dollar.
And the exchange rates have fluctuated a lot. But since 1999, roughly the time frame since the appearance of the euro, the Dollar Index (DXY), despite strong up-and-down movements, has barely changed.
And the long-term decline in the dollar’s share of global foreign exchange reserves during this period is not attributable to exchange rates, but to central banks offloading dollar-denominated assets (data via YCharts):
The dollar against the euro against the also-ran against the Chinese RMB.
The euro’s share in global reserve currencies has been relatively stable in recent years, at just over 20%. In the second quarter, it was 20.5%. It has been the second largest reserve currency throughout its existence. The fervent hopes of the euro’s early years for “parity” with the dollar were vigorously dashed during the euro debt crisis.
All other reserve currencies combined, including the Chinese renminbi, held a 20.2% share in the second quarter. It’s the spaghetti at the bottom of the table. The RMB, which became the official reserve currency in 2016, was supposed to explode the dollar; it’s the little red line at the bottom:
The graph below is a close-up of also-rans, alone, on a scale of 0% to 6%. Within the group, the yen stands out as it has gained considerable shares in recent years, currently at 5.8%.
Note the rise of the RMB (red line) of around 1% when it first became a separately listed reserve currency in Q4 2016, and was removed from the “other” category whose share subsequently fell. (yellow line).
Almost five years after becoming an official reserve currency, the RMB share has reached 2.6%. People who hoped the RMB would pull the rug under the dollar will have to be extremely patient.
The RMB became the fifth reserve currency in 2018 – behind the USD, EUR, YEN, and GBP – when it surpassed the Canadian dollar and Australian dollar.
The very slow progression of the RMB, visible only under this type of magnifying glass, indicates that central banks around the world are wary of the RMB – the only reserve currency there is. always not fully convertible, further hindering its acceptance.
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