FX.co ★ Uday Kotak calls USD “biggest financial terrorist”

It seems that these days, all and sundry are talking about the US dollar and foretelling its imminent decline. Some experts see the future of the greenback as rather gloomy and blame it for all the troubles. Thus, Uday Kotak has recently called the US currency “the biggest financial terrorist in the world.” Uday Kotak is the richest banker in Asia and the CEO of Kotak Mahindra Bank, one of the largest banks in India. In his speech at the ET Awards in Delhi, the banker harshly criticized the dollar, saying that its status as a reserve currency gives it an unfair advantage in controlling global transactions. “All our money is in nostro accounts (bank accounts held with a foreign bank in local currency). If somebody in the US decides to block it, you are stuck. That is the power of the reserve currency,” Kotak explained. At the same time, he couldn’t see any alternatives to the US dollar although he acknowledged global efforts to find a new reserve currency. He doubted that Europe, the UK, or Japan could offer their currencies for this role. China’s yuan is also unlikely to become the next reserve currency mainly due to the issue of trust.