Reserve currency

A reserve currency (or anchor currency) is a currency that is held in significant quantities by governments and institutions as part of their foreign exchange reserves. The reserve currency is commonly used in international transactions, international investments and all aspects of the global economy. It is often considered a hard currency or safe-haven currency. People who live in a country that issues a reserve currency can purchase imports and borrow across borders more cheaply than people in other nations because they do not need to exchange their currency to do so. A reserve currency (or anchor currency) is a currency that is held in significant quantities by governments and institutions as part of their foreign exchange reserves. The reserve currency is commonly used in international transactions, international investments and all aspects of the global economy. It is often considered a hard currency or safe-haven currency. People who live in a country that issues a reserve currency can purchase imports and borrow across borders more cheaply than people in other nations because they do not need to exchange their currency to do so. By the end of the 20th century, the United States dollar was considered the world's dominant reserve currency. The world's need for dollars has allowed the United States government as well as Americans to borrow at lower costs, granting them an advantage in excess of $100 billion per year. Reserve currencies come and go. International currencies in the past have included the Greek drachma, coined in the fifth century B.C., the Roman denari, the Byzantine solidus and Arab dinar of the middle-ages, the Venetian ducato and the Florentine florin of the Renaissance, the seventeenth century Dutch guilder and the French franc. The Dutch guilder emerged as a de facto world currency in the 18th century due to unprecedented domination of trade by the Dutch East India Company. However, the development of the modern concept of a reserve currency took place in the mid nineteenth century, with the introduction of national central banks and treasuries and an increasingly integrated global economy. By the 1860s, most industrialised countries had followed the lead of the United Kingdom and put their currency on to the gold standard. At that point the UK was the primary exporter of manufactured goods and services and over 60% of world trade was invoiced in pound sterling. British banks were also expanding overseas; London was the world centre for insurance and commodity markets and British capital was the leading source of foreign investment around the world; sterling soon became the standard currency used for international commercial transactions. Attempts were made in the interwar period to restore the gold standard. The British Gold Standard Act reintroduced the gold bullion standard in 1925, followed by many other countries. This led to relative stability, followed by deflation, but because the onset of the Great Depression and other factors, global trade greatly declined and the gold standard fell. Speculative attacks on the pound forced Britain entirely off the gold standard in 1931. After World War II, the international financial system was governed by a formal agreement, the Bretton Woods System. Under this system the United States dollar was placed deliberately as the anchor of the system, with the US government guaranteeing other central banks that they could sell their US dollar reserves at a fixed rate for gold. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the system suffered setbacks ostensibly due to problems pointed out by the Triffin dilemma—the conflict of economic interests that arises between short-term domestic objectives and long-term international objectives when a national currency also serves as a world reserve currency. The IMF regularly publishes the aggregated Currency Composition of Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER). The reserves of the individual reporting countries and institutions are confidential. Thus the following table is a limited view about the global currency reserves that only deals with allocated reserves: The percental composition of currencies of official foreign exchange reserves from 1995 to 2017.