> There's probably something I'm missing since I am not an economist. What you are missing is that these countries are leveraging their positions as reserve cu

> There's probably something I'm missing since I am not an economist. What you are missing is that these countries are leveraging their positions as reserve currencies both for global corporations and also other countries. This crisis strongly benefited the USD, EUR and JPY. The demand for these currencies (especially the USD) is in the trillions. In the unfortunate event that the European Union is dissolved and countries like Italy/Spain decides to switch to their own, most people/companies holding EUR will decide to switch to ... probably USD/JPY as they don't really trust their home currencies much. That's why the U.S. has an (or multiple) air carrier around the world to project power.