José Antonio Ocampo

José Antonio Ocampo is Professor at Columbia University, former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations for Economic and Social Affairs, and former Minister of Finance of Colombia. He is the …

Full profile

Revoking America’s Exorbitant Privilege

The ongoing political stalemate in the United States holds two major implications for the international monetary system. The better-known consequence has been deepening uncertainty about the US dollar, the main global reserve currency, and US Treasury securities, supposedly the world’s “safest” financial asset. Not surprisingly, the major investors in US Treasuries, China and Japan, have expressed alarm. Simply put, the global economy has at its center a dysfunctional political regime that generates recurrent threats of default on the world’s major reserve asset.

--

==

--

One central element of these proposals is to eliminate, once and for all, the veto power of any individual country. With the world waiting anxiously for some of America’s political leaders to behave like adults, the cost of maintaining the current non-system has become all too obvious.

http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/on-the-us-threat-to-the-international-monetary-system-by-jose-antonio-ocampo

R