This outstanding article shows how the need to use dollars in international trade and finance gives the United States great foreign policy power. European countries, for example, do not agree with the U.S. policy of sanctioning Iran, but are forced to go along, so as not to lose access to U.S financial and other markets. Venezuela owns CITGO, but sanctions are preventing it from receiving money from CITGO’s sale of oil to the United States, Venezuela’s major source of money for imports.

The dollar is still king. How (in the world) did that happen? Peter S. Goodman New York Times February 22, 2019

Photo: Dollar bills. Credit Kim Dombrowski