COMMENT At the US-China summit this week, Chinese officials raised concerns that the surging US budget deficit could undermine the value of China’s huge dollar holdings. These same concerns motivated the governor of the People’s Bank of China to suggest replacing the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency with special drawing rights issued by the International Monetary Fund. To be specific, he proposed that central banks be allowed to swap their dollar reserves for SDRs held in a substitution account by the IMF. SDRs represent a basket of four currencies – comprising 44 per cent US dollars, 34 per cent euros, 11 per cent yen and 11 per cent pound sterling.
However, SDRs are not a realistic alternative to US dollars as the global reserve currency because there are too few of them in circulation. For the same reason, swaps of US dollars for SDRs would have limited utility.
