Dollar Diplomacy

Jesse Walker | June 18, 2009

The Yekaterinburg summit of the BRIC nations—Brazil, Russia, India, and China—ended earlier this week, and the dollar's status as the world's reserve currency is safe for now, though the long run looks much iffier. Just a day after the meeting, Russia and China agreed to switch a large chunk of their bilateral trade to their national currencies. China had already arranged currency swaps with several other countries, including Brazil. Don't be surprised to see similar shifts in the future.

At any rate, the biggest story of the summit isn't the conclusions those countries reached about currencies or any other topic. It's the fact that they met in the first place, and that they denied the United States a seat at the table. The unipolar moment is over.