Only one country in the world issues a currency that is held and recognized in every country in the world. The U.S. dollar has been de facto the world currency since the Bretton Woods accords of 1944.

Having your money accepted for payment in other countries means the U.S. does not have to earn foreign currency abroad or borrow in other currencies.

Other countries try to earn U.S. dollars by selling more than they buy from the rest of the world. When not earning U.S. dollars, countries have to borrow dollars.

Borrowed U.S. dollars have to be repaid in newly earned dollars. Such U.S. dollar-denominated debt is a real constraint on governments the world over.

For years, we've been told the dictates of globalization, and the intrusive and prescriptive terms of free trade agreements in particular, are immutable, natural, and unquestionable. When workers were displaced by the migration of multinational capital toward more profitable jurisdictions, we were told there's nothing we can do about it except join the race to the bottom in a desperate attempt to hang onto our jobs. When investment and employment were undermined by lopsided trade and capital flows, and employers and financiers utilized the leverage afforded them by unrestrained international mobility to ratchet the distributional structure of the economy ever-more-blatantly in their own favour, we were informed this was just the logic of markets. And anyone who questioned