The Chinese have recently launched oil market future contracts in its local currency, the yuan. This is big news because oil trading has been done in U.S. dollars since the 1970s. Many consider this special status one of the reasons why the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency.
But every time I read that the yuan is going to dethrone the dollar and that China is going to monopolize the oil market in its local currency, I remember those films and reports of the late 1980s that predicted Japan would overtake the United States.
