The dollar dominance. Exorbitant privilege. “Mercury” and “Mars”
In a 2017 paper, Eichengreen and colleagues contrasted what they called the “Mercury” and “Mars” theories of international currencies, so named for the Roman gods of commerce and war.
In the near-decade since that paper was published, Mars-style explanations of the dollar are ascendant.
The Roman denarius, for example, spread — as we would say now — at the barrel of a gun. “Roman money was used to pay Roman soldiers,” writes Eichengreen. “It traveled with Roman armies.
Dollar dominance is “late middle-aged,” writes Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff
Walter Frick Bloomberg 2 July 2026
In the first Century, a merchant setting off from Rome on a journey to Cologne was able to pay his bills with the same coin, the denarius, over his entire journey.
Initially, Rome safeguarded cohesion of its large empire by fire and sword, then increasingly by placing even the most remote provinces under the legal system and administration of Rome.
The precise lessons to be drawn from such historical episodes may not be entirely clear.
Professor Otmar Issing, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank
https://www.internetional.se/issingiea.htm#lessons
America’s net liabilities to the rest of the world have reached an extraordinary 90 per cent of GDP.
https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2026/02/why-dollar-may-have-much-further-to-fall.html
The end of the dollar’s exorbitant privilege
It is the dollar-based global financial system that is the real source of America’s hegemonic power
Plenty of non-Americans resent the dollar’s dominance; no one can put forward a better alternative.
https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/it-is-dollar-based-global-financial.html
Kommentarer