The Nobel Prize-winning economist Ronald Coase argued in 1960 that if property rights are defined, secure and transferable, individuals will ensure that resources go to their highest valued uses.

Professor Daniel Benjamin, from the Property and Environment Research Center in Montana in the United States, drew on Coase, in 2006, to reason vigorously that clear, enforced property rights are fundamental in shaping prosperity.

A pivotal aspect of modern property rights is that they must be protected against any irregular expropriation by government, Benjamin said, stating a widely accepted view across the developed world and well beyond.

Since World War II, modern economies depend hugely on having reliable access to a reserve currency that offers a stable trading regime. Despite the insistent championing, dating back centuries, by the West of the paramount importance of property rights, there is deep and growing concern that Washington has now begun an assault aimed at the very foundations of this hallowed regime.

There are two primary facets of this ambush: the way in which the US dollar is being openly exploited, and the more direct attack on the core security expectations associated with property rights. In both cases, this recklessness is aimed at securing certain fervently framed political ends.

Many commentators have looked askance, over the last several years, at how Washington has increasingly misused the immense economic power that comes from running the world's established international currency.