I understand the United States’ role in the global economy, with the Intranet origin being a US Govt. project. But still, why is this the standard? Is it just culture being the answer?
(100% willing to accept DMs that are not ELI5ed)
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Well it may not always be. The reasons why are a bit complex but to get to the meat and potatoes it goes back to the English empire. This spread the English language across the earth to where it is now as almost a universal language. Most any nation of economic importance will see a shocking number of English speakers even in ones where that isn’t the every day language. This is a strong benefit to native English speakers such as seen in the USA. Further during the world wars the USA played a massive support roll economically in the beginning of both intertwining it’s own dollar into the different nations of Europe. For those keeping track, that is effectively every nation with modern technology at the time. The USA also has strong trade ties to China, in an attempt to combat the communism seen there, which the main manufacturing nation on the planet. These factors spread the use of the USA dollar just as much as the English spread their language. Understand I way simplified this and this explanation is missing a lot of info and to properly address those missing points would take quite the history lesson.
As for why the USA dollar may no longer be the reserve currency of the world, it again has to do with China and policy in the USA. The USA has recently largely inflated its dollar making confidence in it decline. China has economic ties to many nations and not just the USA making it possible that their currency may, in time, be found preferable to the USA currency. Understand the currency people use is all about how many obstacles to trade it creates. Many will accept the USA dollar but probably won’t accept the currency of some random nation, say the Egyptian pound for example, because others don’t accept it as is. If you don’t have to swap between 100 different currencies for international trade why would you?
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