Why the Norwegian krone could be the
world’s first global currency
The value of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, fed on its oil and gas receipts, is growing so much faster than the country’s GDP that the Norwegian krone may well become the world’s first global currency. Not the world’s most important currency or a reserve currency like the US dollar, but the first currency whose value is determined largely by the movement of global markets and only minimally by its country’s economic activity.
This won’t make the krone itself a target for investors overseas. It isn’t liquid enough for that; there aren’t enough krone to go around. Nor will it become a bellwether; observing the krone and deducing which aspect of the world’s financial markets is influencing its fluctuations won’t be easy. But the expansion of the fund will make it into an investor of immense means, with a singular capacity to transform green energy, infrastructure, and other causes Norway cares about.
Since 1996, Norway’s oil fund—formally called the Government Pension Fund Global—has been investing fossil fuel revenues in fixed-income assets, equities, and real estate overseas, trying to build a financial reserve for its citizens in a post-oil future. On its website, the fund hosts a live ticker of its value, which now hovers around $1.3 trillion—making it the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund.
The oil fund owns more than 1.5% of all the listed stocks worldwide, and its returns alone were worth a third of Norway’s GDP in 2020—even amidst the pandemic. “It’s as if every Norwegian has a personal offshore investment portfolio of $240,000,” said Tor Vollalokken, a senior advisor at the New York-based investment analysis firm Exante Data.
Vollalokken, who has tracked the krone for decades, recently extrapolated both the oil fund and Norway’s GDP forward over 30 years, using past rates of growth as a guide. At the moment, the fund’s value is roughly three times that of the GDP. By 2030, the fund will near $9 trillion—more than 14 times the value of the GDP. By that point, the krone will undergo a dramatic shift. SOURCE: QZ.com
