> So why has the dollar been
> holding up despite that?
> Might it be that no one
> else is in such great shape
> either?
The main reason, IMO, doesn't have to do with short-run expectations: where each country is expected to be in its business cycle. It's about timing the switch to a new global currency for good. Absent credible international monetary agreements, the switch can only happen by crisis. Because, as economists say, the reign of a global currency is a self-referential dynamic system. Like a lingua franca, a computing platform, a network, etc., the system has multiple equilibria. At one extreme, everybody uses it because everybody else uses it. At the other extreme, nobody uses it because nobody else uses it. For the time being, and to the extent the victims of the USD can't credibly collude to dump the USD (because they are differently tied to the fate of the U.S. economy), the USD is safely entrenched: there are some upfront "transaction costs" that will fall on those first switching to another denomination. But, unless the U.S. miraculously reverses the geo-economic trends of the last half a century, it is bound to happen.