The dollar system for trade works well enough for the Western countries. But for any country which the USA disapproves of, she imposes 'sanctions' and that limits the availability of dollars for trade. Cuba has been sanctioned for decades by the USA. Today there are now many new examples: Russia, Venezuela, North Korea, Iran, and Syria are perhaps the main sanctioned countries. Domestic banks across Europe are forced to demand that their customers conform to US foreign policy.

There are now movements to combat these hindrances. China has for some years wanted to use her currency, the renminbi, for world trade. China has already begun to avoid the dollar system, which regularly infuriates the leaders in Washington.

The essence of free-market ideology since the first half of the 19th century until now has been that competing firms were efficient and represented the best way to run society. Governments would overspend; organised labour is selfish; barriers to the movement of capital services and labour should be reduced to the minimum. This is neo-liberalism in a nutshell. The reality is, of course, very different, as firms tend to move to monopoly or oligopoly, and so inequality increases. This is not the place to expand the argument into economic theory. Neo-liberal economics has been widely practised across the world for the last 50 years.