The dollar has dominated global finance for so long that its supremacy can seem like a fact of nature.
In Our Dollar, Your Problem, Kenneth Rogoff’s 2025 history of the currency’s rise, he examines the pressures building beneath American financial power. The dollar has given the United States unusual advantages. America can borrow in its own currency, while its financial markets exert influence that few others can match.
Rogoff asks how long those advantages can last. Rising debt, higher borrowing costs, geopolitical rivalry and new forms of money are changing the system that made the dollar indispensable. He does not predict a sudden collapse or a single rival replacing it. Instead, he sees a more gradual shift. The dollar may remain dominant while becoming less dominant than before.
The question has grown more pressing as America’s fiscal position has weakened. Rogoff has warned that policymakers remain slow to adapt to a world where interest rates cannot be assumed to fall indefinitely. His concern goes beyond the size of government debt. He worries about the tendency to delay difficult decisions until markets or events leave little choice.
Kenneth Rogoff has spent much of his career studying what happens when that moment arrives. His best-known work, This Time Is Different, written with Carmen Reinhart, examined eight centuries of banking, currency and sovereign debt crises. Their research showed how often countries convince themselves that their circumstances are different from those that came before.
Debt builds during periods of confidence. Governments explain away risks. Then the correction arrives, often after warning signs have been visible for years.
Previously, as Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund, Kenneth Rogoff worked where economic theory met markets, governments and political reality. Before economics, however, he was an international chess grandmaster. As a teenager, he travelled alone through Europe and supported himself through tournament winnings. He later left professional chess for university.
