SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: The dollar's share of global reserves is declining. The response in certain Western financial circles is apocalyptic.

The dollar's share of global reserves is declining.

The response in certain Western financial circles is apocalyptic.

As if the currency of a country representing barely four percent of humanity controlling the global reserve system was the natural state of things.

As if the arrangement made in 1944 at a hotel in New Hampshire, when most of the world was colonized or occupied and the rest was still pulling itself from the rubble, was a permanent feature of economic reality rather than a historical contingency.

The dollar's dominance was not earned by the laws of nature.

It was established by the specific circumstances of a specific moment.

Those circumstances are changing.

Other economies grew. Other currencies stabilized. Other countries noticed that holding their reserves in dollars meant America could sanction them into poverty by making a phone call.

The response to that noticing is not sinister.

It is rational.

The only people for whom it feels sinister are the people who needed the arrangement to be permanent in order to feel secure.

Security built on other people's limited options was never security.

It was borrowed time.