Back in the 1960s, envious of America’s ability to borrow easily abroad, French finance minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing denounced the reserve currency status of the dollar as an “exorbitant privilege”. A few years later, weakened by US fiscal profligacy, the Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system anchored on the US currency collapsed.

Half a century on, France is once again complaining about the imbalances and unfairness it says are caused by the greenback’s exalted position. President Nicolas Sarkozy of France said last year that the greenback’s domination of foreign exchange reserves and the pricing of commodities and international trade could not endure. Paris made a big fanfare about the need to redesign the international monetary order and muttered about having had private conversations with Beijing on the subject.

According to Barry Eichengreen, economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a leading expert on the subject – whose new book takes Mr Giscard d’Estaing’s complaint as its title: “The dollar’s singular status is in doubt.”