The academic should be able to document how and why dollar could lose its supremacy, while providing possible solutions to such hypothetical events.
The position was advertised by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The chosen candidate will be given the job of assessing risks to the dollar’s position as world reserve currency, specifically from cryptos, and the emergence of new economies such as India and China.
The last date for applying to the position is February 28. The position comes under the intelligence community (IC) postdoctoral research fellowship program backed by the ODNI.
Joseph Maguire, the Director of National Intelligence, reports to the POTUS, Homeland Security Council and the National Security Council on all matters associated with national security.
The Director of National Intelligence heads the National Intelligence Program and also the US Intelligence community.
The nature of job is explained with a straight forward statement that “the U.S. maintains international dominance in no small part due to its financial power.”
Furthermore, the job description highlights that the greenback’s position as the global reserve currency enables the US to effectively slap sanctions against its opponents, whether to demotivate nuclear proliferation or to destabilize offensive regimes.
Grip on liquidity of the dollar, which dominates overseas debt and overseas trade settlement, enable the US to put pressure on countries and make them follow the geopolitical, strategic and economic interests of the US.
Yet, as ODNI has pointed out:
“There are many threats to the U.S. dollar maintaining its status as the world reserve currency. Countries such as China and India have large growing economies that could compete with U.S. economic growth. Many cryptocurrency enthusiasts predict that either a global cryptocurrency or a national digital currency could undermine the U.S. dollar.”
The chosen researcher will have to analyze and model the aforesaid scenarios, in addition to other, unforeseeable or “black swan” situations, which could topple dollar’s tactical dominance.
ODNI looks for a candidate who can employ “new statistical and artificial intelligence approaches to historical examples as well as possible future scenarios” — a person with thorough knowledge in finance, economics, and nascent “alternative banking mechanisms.”
Such a survey is anticipated to derive in-depth knowledge to shield the US position as the world’s largest economy, assisting the country’s intelligence community to forecast precarious developments and to adopt methods that would negate the likely damage.
“If the U.S. dollar loses its status […] national security advantages disappear, leaving the U.S. vulnerable. This project could allow the national security community to prepare for and […] prevent this economic crisis.”
For a while analysts have been discussing about the asset that could substitute the greenback as a worldwide reserve currency, citing steady de-dollarization of Eurasia, or to China’s strengthening cultural and economic relationship with the Europe.
International participants have explained unique digital currency ventures such as Facebook’s stable coin Libra in a different manner. Last year, the ex-governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) has mentioned that “valuing Libra is inseparable from the global dollarization trend.”
In the US, Libra and also the digital yuan (backed by the People’s Bank of China) is perceived as a threat to the dollar’s superiority.