Dr. Benn Steil is director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, author of the special report Lessons of the Financial Crisis (Counsel on Foreign Relations Press, 2009), and coauthor of Money, Markets, and Sovereignty (Yale University Press, 2009).
In March 2009, Chinese central bank Governor Zhou Xiaochuan caused a brief stir in the currency markets by suggesting that a dollar-based international monetary system was inherently unsustainable. “Issuing countries of reserve currencies are constantly confronted with the dilemma between achieving their domestic monetary policy goals and meeting other countries’ demand for reserve currencies,” he wrote.
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