Could it have been the rouble instead? The question is a strange opening gambit for a history of dollar dominance, with Russia’s economy sealed off from the West and its output less than a tenth of America’s. The idea of the rouble as a global reserve currency is laughable—and that is why Kenneth Rogoff considers it near the start of his new book, “Our Dollar, Your Problem”. What is obvious now was not at all so in the 1960s and 70s, when the rouble bloc’s economy was fast becoming the envy of the world. Soviet growth was red-hot. Plenty of economists believed parity with America was “not just likely but inevitable”.
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