No, that headline isn't about the lowly Jamaican dollar. Curiously, that hasn't been doing so badly of late. Rather, I'm talking of the United States dollar we so fetishise. Its days as a pillar of American economic dominance may be numbered.
This year, the US national debt crossed the $10 trillion threshold. That's a heap of money. If you took that many dollar notes and placed them end to end, they would stretch a billion miles, deep into the cold recesses of the solar system.
Hurtling through space at the highest speeds human ingenuity has managed, a space shuttle flying non-stop at maximum velocity would take over 10 years to cross that distance.
And it just got worse. By some estimates, in the last couple of months, the American government quietly slipped another $7 billion on to the tab. Proportionately, that starts to move the US into Jamaica's league of indebtedness.
It isn't quite the same, mind you. Most of the recent addition to US debt resulted from the Federal Reserve Board - the country's central bank - buying securities from the banking system so as to inject money into the economy. Barring an end-to-history sort of crash, most, if not all, that money will eventually return to the government, as the economy regains its footing and a market for those securities reopens.
Nonetheless, a corner has been turned. At the moment, the US dollar is strengthening as a result of a temporary feature known as the flight to safety or quality. With so much economic uncertainty and fear about, investors around the world are parking their money where they think it is safest: the world's most reliable creditor, the US treasury. The panic won't last forever, though.
Bank notes
Of course, some of you are probably opening your wallets and asking where on earth that billion miles of dollars lies hidden. The truth is, only a tiny fraction is in bank notes. And only a tiny fraction of it is created by the government. Most 'money' is little more than digits in cyberspace or on slips of paper, as we consult bank statements and buy with plastic.
And when you go to the bank and take out a loan, the officer doesn't call the government for permission. By crediting your account with a nominal figure, the bank has just 'created' money. So, nobody really knows for sure, how many US dollars there are sloshing around the global economy.
But, because so far, we've all trusted the US government to honour its commitments and preserve the value of its currency, the world has continued to accept US dollars in payment for what it sells. That gave the US licence to 'print' money to pay its bills, by merely crediting the accounts of foreign governments with yet more 'cash' when, each year, the country spent more than it earned.
Many ious
That may now change. There are already so many IOUs with Uncle Sam's name on them that the world may begin to ask for collateral in return for loans. When the dust has settled on this crisis, there is a very good chance that folks everywhere will begin hedging their bets. They may start asking for payments in currencies other than the greenback.
Should that happen, it will be the end of an era. The US, which grew so accustomed to living on credit, will have no choice but to live within its means. Such an adjustment would be long, and hard.
And at the end of it, America may find itself a diminished power. It wasn't that long ago that Britain and France ruled the world. Nothing lasts forever.
John Rapley is president of Caribbean Policy Research Institute (CaPRI), an independent think tank affiliated to the UWI, Mona.
