A quarter of a century since he spotted the growing clout of emerging-market countries, the economist who coined the BRIC acronym said those countries could eventually build alternatives to the dollar, an idea which had seemed a “fantasy” until only very recently.
Jim O’Neill told Reuters that recent advances in payment technologies have changed his view on the prospects for alternative financial arrangements among BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
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“About 18 months ago, if you would have quizzed me about all of this, I would have said it’s a fantasy, the idea that the BRICS countries can create some kind of alternative financial vehicle,” he said in an interview.
That belief was in part due to much of the thinking about the global monetary system being shaped by decades of dollar dominance following the collapse in the 1970s of the system established by the Bretton Woods Agreement, he said.
