Video News/In Focus with Jeremy Szafron

(Kitco News) - The US dollar is gradually losing its share of global reserves, but gold is not the asset taking its place, according to Barry Eichengreen, professor of economics at UC Berkeley and author of a standard history of the international monetary system. Speaking with Kitco News, Eichengreen said the dollar has been shedding reserve share at roughly half a percentage point a year, and that the losses have gone not to the euro or China's renminbi but to a basket of smaller currencies such as the Australian and Canadian dollars. He argued the euro has gained none of the ground the dollar has lost this century, and that the renminbi's push has stalled. On the record pace of central bank gold buying, Eichengreen framed it as structural catch-up by countries that had held too little, rather than a vote against the dollar, and made the case that gold cannot serve as money because it works poorly as a unit of account and a means of payment. He also revealed that his long-standing view of a slow, no-crisis decline changed on a specific date, April 2, 2025, after which he began to worry about a more abrupt loss of confidence, conceding on an earlier forecast, "I was wrong."