The global frustration with America and its dollar, after yet another U.S. government crisis, is clear. Xinhua, China’s official news agency, for example, published an article on October 13 titled “U.S. fiscal failure warrants a de-Americanized world.”

“As U.S. politicians of both political parties are still shuffling back and forth between the White House and the Capitol Hill without striking a viable deal to bring normality to the body politic they brag about, it is perhaps a good time for the befuddled world to start considering building a de-Americanized world,” the article said. Another article warned that “U.S. Treasury bonds may no longer be a safe investment.”

Europe also criticized America. After having endured lectures and scolding from the U.S. on their economic crisis, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso took the opportunity to berate America. “If this had happened in Europe, what wouldn’t they say about Europe?” he said. “Imagine that we would have a shutdown at the level of EU institutions. What would they say about Europe? What caricatures there would be. What shaming there would be!”

Even America admitted that the shutdown is causing nations to lose trust in America. “It does have an effect on our relationships around the world,” said Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, “and it cuts straight to the obvious question: Can you rely on the United States as a reliable partner to fulfill its commitments to its allies?”

The Daily Telegraph’s assistant editor Jeremy Warner warned that “rarely before has international dissatisfaction with the dollar’s role as reserve currency to the world been as great as it is now.”

But this raises the question: If the world now sees America as unreliable, why do they trust the dollar?

There’s only one reason: because they have no alternative.

This is the only thing that has stopped nations around the world selling the dollar en masse, crashing America’s economy and sending its borrowing costs soaring.

That puts America in a dangerous place. Everyone around the world wants a new, non-American currency. The Chinese need to keep selling the renminbi and buying a safe foreign currency in order to keep their currency and their exports cheap. Arabic nations need a safe store of wealth. Europe needs a dependable economic system.

As soon as there is a credible dollar alternative, the rest of the world will jump at it, and the dollar will be toast. “The search for long-term alternatives to the dollar is on as never before,” writes Warner.

“Serious alternatives to the dollar, such as a global reserve currency, are still a long way off, but the latest shenanigans on Capitol Hill have given the search for them renewed and added momentum,” he concludes. “The U.S. is recklessly throwing away its future.”

Europe is the only place such an alternative could come from. China’s financial markets are not yet well developed and its government lacks the trust that is built over time.

But Europe is currently a mess. Many are surprised that the euro hasn’t already fallen apart. Right now it seems less trustworthy than the dollar.

But the euro has stayed together because there is a huge political will behind it. Politicians simply won’t let the single currency die.

They may let the euro die. Professor François Heisbourg of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a strong believer in a united Europe, recently suggested exactly that in his latest book. The euro, he argued, should be dismantled, but Europe should go on and form a new single currency with a smaller group of nations in 10 years’ time.

Despite the faults of the euro, Europe’s elite are determined to make some kind of single currency work. They may yet fix the euro. They may create a new single currency. However they fix it, they will have to address all the inherent problems in the euro and forge a genuinely stable currency. To reassure the international community that it is solid, they may even back the new currency with gold.

Europe has to sort its currency out sooner or later, and the massive unemployment in southern Europe suggests that it will be sooner. When that comes, the world will finally have the dollar alternative it has been yearning for. America’s time as the center of the global economy and the world’s biggest superpower will be over.

The euro was already on the way to eclipsing the dollar before the financial crash exposed fundamental flaws. Those flaws are being remedied. Yet the same crash that wounded the euro also destroyed trust in the dollar—only the politicians in Washington are making matters worse. Once the euro is fixed, it will quickly gain lost ground.

For more on what this will mean for the world, see our article “New Global Trend: Dump a Dollar, Buy a Euro.”