The United States should expect the dollar’s status as the world’s primary reserve currency to diminish, according to World Bank President Robert Zoellick. He said that as the roles of the euro and Chinese renminbi continue to expand, the dollar will continue to lose its position as the favored world currency.

“The United States would be mistaken to take for granted the dollar’s place as the world’s predominant reserve currency,” Zoellick said on September 28 in a speech at the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Mr. Zoellick said that while the dollar will likely remain a major currency, there will increasingly be other options.

“There is every reason to believe,” he said, “that the euro’s acceptability could grow. The influence of the euro will depend in part upon the competitiveness of European Union countries in future years …. But Euro financing offers a respectable alternative if the dollar is weak.

“Moreover, China is moving toward gradual internationalization of its currency. China is making it easier for trading partners to do business in renminbi—for example, through currency swaps.”

Beijing issued sovereign bonds in renminbi to offshore investors for the first time this month.

In another step toward expanding the role of the renminbi, Chinese officials recently announced that foreign companies are now allowed to list their stocks in China.

As the world removes its confidence from the American economy and invests it in other economies, the American economy will be upended. The U.S. is facing an economic calamity far worse than the stock market crash of 1929; the scale of this financial crisis will be unprecedented.

Mr. Zoellick can see the colossal shift looming on the horizon. “The one thing we can be sure about,” he said in his speech, “is that another upheaval will happen in your lifetimes.”

In a globally interconnected economic system, a collapse of the dollar would have massive ramifications around the world—including in Europe. The European economy, however, will be in a position to ultimately take advantage of America’s downfall and fill the vacuum left in its absence—the vacuum already emerging.

The spillover effects of an American economic crisis may well trigger the full unification of Europe under one strong leader—a scenario Herbert W. Armstrong spoke of for decades.

For more about the shift in global confidence away from America and toward Europe, read “New Global Trend: Dump a Dollar, Buy a Euro.”