Talk of de-dollarisation is in the air. Last month, in New Delhi, Alexander Babakov, deputy chairman of Russia’s State Duma, said Russia was now spearheading the development of a new currency.

It is to be used for cross-border trade by the BRICS nations: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Weeks later, in Beijing, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, chimed in. “Every night,” he said, he asks himself “why all countries have to base their trade on the dollar.”