Bloomberg’s Natalia Kniazhevich moderated a Global Alts New York 2026 panel on dollar dominance with David Zervos, chief market strategist at Jefferies, and Brendan Greeley, Financial Times contributing editor and author of The Almighty Dollar. The discussion covered the recent equity selloff, hotter-than-expected jobs reports pushing expectations toward a rate hike, and the deeper structural question Greeley’s book frames: why the world still borrows in dollars despite a decade of predictions otherwise.

Dollar dominance has survived every credible obituary. Zervos opened with the recent shocks. Energy is up 50 to 70%, rate expectations have moved from pricing two cuts to pricing one hike, a 100 basis point swing in front-end rates. Those are large negative shocks on both supply and demand. The economy has absorbed both. The stock market sits up roughly 8% on the year, off the highs but well above where any reasonable model would have predicted. Zervos read that as evidence of a productivity story rooted in AI, deregulation, pro-business policy, and tax certainty. The capital share of income has never been higher.

Why dollar dominance compounds through cycles

Greeley walked the historical arc. The Almighty Dollar argues that the world borrows in dollars because the legal, plumbing, and institutional infrastructure that prices, clears, and enforces dollar contracts is still unmatched. Sanctions risk has weakened the case at the margin. The Russia asset capture in 2022 accelerated diversification by reserve managers. None of that has produced a credible substitute. The euro carries fragmentation risk. The renminbi carries capital control risk. Dollar dominance does not require the dollar to be loved. It requires the alternatives to be worse, and they still are.

Where Zervos and Greeley disagreed on dollar dominance

Greeley pushed back on the productivity story. He argued some of the apparent labor share decline reflects measurement issues around AI-driven services and gig work, and some reflects policy choices that have made it harder for labor to capture productivity gains. That distinction matters for the durability of dollar dominance. If the productivity story is partly a measurement artifact, the policy environment that supports the premium is more politically fragile than the consensus currently prices.

Zervos accepted the measurement caveat but stayed on the underlying point. Capital is being deployed where the returns are clearest, and those returns sit disproportionately in dollar-denominated assets.

What allocators should do with the dollar dominance call

The panel converged on a practical takeaway. Hedging FX exposure on cross-border portfolios is more important now than at any point in the last decade because the dispersion across G10 currencies is wider. Selective EM positioning makes sense where rates are restrictive and credit conditions are improving. Gold belongs in most portfolios as a reserve-mix hedge, not as a primary return engine. The Almighty Dollar thesis does not say the dollar is invincible. It says the cost of betting against it is consistently higher than the consensus expects.