If you’ve followed my work, you know I don’t do panic. I look for patterns—quiet shifts beneath the noise. Kenneth Rogoff’s new book, Our Dollar, Your Problem, is one of those rare signals that cuts through. It’s not about predicting collapse. It’s about asking: What happens when the system we all rely on gets stretched too far?

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A Dangerous Comfort

For nearly a century, the U.S. dollar has played the role of anchor, safe haven, and global IOU. Countries lend to us cheaply, investors hoard our debt, and we borrow freely—without facing the limits others do.

Rogoff calls this the “exorbitant privilege.” I’ve called it structural asymmetry: a system that works until it doesn’t. And the warning signs are starting to flash.

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The Quiet Mechanics of a Slow Unraveling

Rogoff walks us through it clearly. U.S. debt is ballooning, and with interest rates still high here in 2025, the cost of servicing that debt is growing faster than expected. Foreign investors—who once treated U.S. Treasuries like gold—are beginning to ask harder questions. So are domestic ones.

He outlines the tools the U.S. government still has:

• Default? Unthinkable—but in today’s political environment, not impossible.
• Inflation? Not very effective, since so much of our debt is short-term or indexed.
• Financial repression? Quietly forcing Americans to hold more government debt. Subtle. And already happening.

None of these are clean solutions. They’re signs that we’ve run out of easy options.

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The Illusion of Infinite Credit

Here’s the part that hit me hardest: the U.S. earns more on its investments abroad than it pays on its debt at home. That return gap has shielded us for years. But it’s shrinking. Interest costs are rising. And confidence, once lost, doesn’t come back on cue.

This is where the foresight lens matters. We’re not talking about collapse tomorrow. We’re talking about conditions that quietly shift what’s possible, what’s affordable, and what risks we’re willing to take.

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Why This Matters for You

You don’t have to be a currency trader to care about this. If the dollar’s dominance fades—even a little—it affects:

• What your government can spend.
• What your bank pays you (or charges you).
• Whether your country is a magnet for investment—or a flight risk.

The system as we know it depends on trust in the U.S. fiscal machine. Rogoff is saying: that trust is not automatic anymore.

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Rogoff Isn’t Predicting Crisis. He’s Pointing to Choices.

What I respect about this book is that it isn’t alarmist. It’s forensic. He tracks how we got here—through wars, crises, policy decisions—and reminds us: dominance is earned, not granted. The dollar’s role in the world is not a law of nature. It’s a product of behavior, policy, and credibility.

And that credibility is showing cracks.

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My Take

Rogoff’s message aligns with a theme I’ve been writing about for months: we are living through a fiscal inversion. What used to be unthinkable (U.S. fiscal fragility) is now plausible. What used to be bulletproof (our debt capacity) is now conditional.

If the dollar becomes just another currency—no longer “the world’s problem,” but one of many—the ground under our feet shifts. Slowly, then all at once.

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Final Thought

This book is a must-read if you care about global stability, capital flows, or the future of American influence. But more importantly, it’s a reminder: systems don’t fall from a single push. They fade when we stop tending to them.

The dollar’s strength has always come from more than markets. It comes from discipline, trust, and the perception of control. Lose those—and all the charts in the world won’t save us.

Read this book. Not because it will tell you what will happen—but because it will sharpen how you see what’s already happening. I have added the book to my library.