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U.S. committed to ensuring dollar remains the world’s dominant reserve currency

26 March 2009 11:49 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA-Economics. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said Wednesday that the United States would do whatever it takes to make sure the dollar would remain the world’s dominant reserve currency, clarifying comments he had made earlier in the day that had caused the greenback to fall against major currencies, Washington Post reported.
"I think the dollar remains the world’s dominant reserve currency," Geithner said during a question-and-answer session at the Council on Foreign Relations here. "I think that’s likely to continue for a long period of time. And as a country, we will do what’s necessary to make sure we’re sustaining confidence in our financial markets, and in the productive capacity of this economy and in our long-term fundamentals."
As WSJ reported, U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said separately Wednesday that there will be no discussion of SDRs or the creation of a new reserve currency at the upcoming April 2 meeting of leaders from the Group of 20 nations in Britain.

Earlier, Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People’s Bank of China called for an eventual alternative to the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, proposing an expansion of "special drawing rights," a basket of currencies created by the International Monetary Fund decades ago.

Late Wednesday, the euro had improved to $1.3587 from $1.3443 late Tuesday, while the dollar slipped to Y97.30 from Y97.88, according to EBS. The euro moved up to Y132.19 from Y131.60. The U.K. pound fell to $1.4531 from $1.4670, and the dollar was down to CHF1.1203 from CHF1.1310.