WASHINGTON (AFP) — US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner defended Wednesday the dollar as a key global reserve currency following China's call for a new global currency as an alternative to the greenback.
"I think the dollar remains the world's standard reserve currency, I think that's likely to continue for a long period of time," he said.
"As a country, we will do as necessary to make sure that we are sustaining confidence in our financial markets" and economy," he told the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.
US President Barack Obama on Tuesday defended the dollar as "extraordinarily strong."
He said investors considered the United States "the strongest economy in the world with the most stable political system in the world" even as it was reeling from a prolonged recession stemming from financial turmoil.
People's Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan had this week called for a replacement of the dollar, installed as the reserve currency after World War II, with a different standard run by the International Monetary Fund.
Zhou suggested the IMF's Special Drawing Rights, a currency basket comprising dollars, euros, sterling and yen, could serve as a super-sovereign reserve currency, saying it would not be easily influenced by the policies of individual countries.
China is the largest creditor to the United States, being the top holder of US Treasury bonds worth 739.6 billion dollars as of January, according to US figures. It is also the world's largest holder of US dollars as a reserve currency, at more than one trillion dollars.
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