Der Dollar als internationale Schlüsselwährung | Ursachen und Perspektiven

The Dollar as an International Key Currency. Reasons and Perspectives The US dollar has been by far the most important international key currency todate. However, a rising number of voices have been heard recently that predict – as was the case already once in the end-1950s – the early loss of its dominant position in the international currency system. Assessing the dollar’s special position and its future development presupposes a theory that allows to reduce the existence of international key currencies to rational decision-making by private individuals and by monetary authorities. Within the framework of such a theory pertaining to international key currencies it is possible to identify transaction costs, monetary risks and the process of international liquidity transformation as factors that can explain the rise of the dollar to its dominant position as an international key currency. Since several factors must come together in order to give a currency the status of a key currency, it is not possible either to explain emergency-like changes in status in just one respect. Insofar neither the USA’s high level of external debts nor the decline of the rate of exchange of the dollar represent, of necessity, the end of the international dollar standard. Together with a strongly rising rate of inflation, increasing protectionism and declining savings formation in the USA, it may nonetheless initiate a dramatic decline in the international use of the dollar