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William Dudley, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York, did not comment on U.S. interest rates in a speech. Rather
he said Americans should not be concerned if, for the right
reasons, other currencies started to eat into the dollar's
60-percent share of foreign exchange reserve holdings.
"I don't see this as a zero-sum game," Dudley, one of the most
influential Fed policymakers, said in prepared remarks to a
conference in Zurich that was closed to reporters.
"If other countries' currencies emerge to gain stature as
reserve currencies, it is not obvious to me that the United
States loses," he said, as long as it "is being driven by their
progress, rather than by the U.S. doing a poorer job."
The dollar supplanted the British pound in the last century to
become the world's most important reserve currency, or one that
is widely held and traded globally because it is easily and
safely exchanged into local currencies.
In November, the International Monetary Fund admitted China's
yuan into its benchmark currency basket alongside the dollar,
euro, pound sterling and yen.
"I believe that the most important goal must be to keep our own
house in order," Dudley said at the conference hosted by the IMF
and the Swiss National Bank. "If we do this, then I expect that
the U.S. dollar will earn the right to remain the most important
reserve currency in the world."
(Reporting by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Diane Craft)
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