In the 1960s, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, then France’s Minister of Finance, famously described the unique advantages of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency as an “exorbitant privilege”. He was referring to the US’s ability to finance deficits cheaply, accumulate foreign goods and services by issuing its own currency, and avoid the balance-of-payments constraints faced by other nations. While Giscard d’Estaing’s critique primarily focused on the monetary seigniorage of the Federal