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Money. "By now, any literate investor knows there are too many dollars held by Asian central banks, but nobody can figure out what happens next. It is obvious, for example, that if they were to sell, or even stop buying, the ever-increasing supply of treasury debt, interest rates in the United States would rise substantially. The less obvious but inescapable side effects would be lower stock prices, higher inflation, and a softer economy .. It seems unlikely that Chinese bureaucrats would initiate any precipitous move away from the dollar, either in the composition of their reserves or in the manipulated peg of 8.3 renminbi/$. It is more plausible that external events will impose change. Still, financial officials in Asia are telegraphing creeping abandonment of the dollar. Stephanie Pomboy of Macromavens notes that the percentage of Chinese FX reserves recycled into Treasuries declined to 24% in the second half of 2003 from 54% for all of 2002. These signals, alone, may prove sufficient to accelerate the dollar�s slide from its perch as the global numeraire .. ". More John Hathaway.