The great financial crisis, alongside the ascent of China and other emerging markets and the existential threat to the euro, is prompting policymakers in the West, too, to question the established monetary order. Change is in the air.
But with no obvious alternative to the dollar for now, the timing and extent of any shifts in the existing order are inherently unpredictable, much like exchange rates themselves.
While Beijing sees opportunities in using the yuan beyond its borders, others see risks - not least to China itself: relaxing capital controls so foreigners can reinvest their accumulated yuan in China's securities markets is one of the preconditions of reserve currency status.
Yet allowing market-driven money flows to drive exchange and interest rates would weaken the ruling Communist Party's tight grip on two of the main economic levers, potentially sowing the very instability it abhors.
John Williamson, one of the foremost academics on exchange rates, went back to basics and questioned the assumption that reserve currency status confers vast benefits.
Whereas China, Brazil and others have laMBAsted the United States for deliberately cheapening the dollar through loose monetary policies, Williamson argued that U.S. exchange-rate flexibility is actually limited because the dollar is the anchor of the system. It is other countries that adjust their rates; the dollar then adjusts as a "residual".
Of course, the United States gets to finance its payments deficits more cheaply because of demand for dollars from reserve managers, but this might not be enough to outweigh the loss of freedom to manage its exchange rate.
"It is not surprising that many economists have therefore concluded that a reserve currency role is not advisable," said Williamson, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
He identified only two ways that U.S. power in the world economy is enhanced by the dollar's dominant role, which he does not expect to be challenged in the next quarter century.