Not just a cold, it could be much worse.

"The dollar sign is among the world's most potent symbols, emblematic of far more than US currency," wrote H Anderson. "It's shorthand for the American dream and all the consumerism and commodification that comes with it, signifying at once sunny aspiration, splashy greed and rampant capitalism." But why is the dollar represented by the letter 'S' and not by the letter 'D'? The word dollar came from 'thaler' in 'joachimsthaler', which gave way to "the Spanish dollar", also know as the peso, wrote M Jones. So, the dollar symbol '$', does not stand for U and S of United States but the S and P of the Spanish peso. So what? The US being the largest economy in the world, 'when America sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold'. Actually, it is China that is sneezing and infecting the world, especially Asia, and not the US, wrote A Yao. What happens if both of them sneeze on each other? Apparently, both may fall into the renowned "Thucydides trap", according to Prof N Roubini. "A full-scale cold war thus could trigger a new stage of deglobalization, or at least a division of the global economy into two incompatible economic blocs. In either scenario, trade in goods, services, capital, labor, technology and data would be severely restricted, and the digital realm would become a 'splinternet', wherein Western and Chinese nodes would not connect to one another." "In the simplest terms, bonds investors are screaming recession, while equity and credit traders refuse to hear it," wrote Potter and Lee. "We still see many markets overpricing global growth prospects," said J Bateman. "The one market not overpricing growth prospects is bond. The yield on 10-year Treasuries has dropped in the past five days, after the biggest monthly decline since 2015. Europe's benchmark, 10-year German bunds, closed at minus 0.257% on Friday, the lowest on record." The German economy is based on exports, which increased 3% to just of 1.3 trillion euros, in 2018. But, "Industrial production in April fell by 1.9% compared with the previous month and exports were 0.5% lower than a year earlier." The national central banks, the Bundesbank "is now predicting growth of just 0.6% for this year, compared with a forecast of 1.6% it made in December". "Factory activity contracted in most Asian countries last month" as "PMIs were below the 50-point mark separating contraction from expansion in Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Taiwan, came below expectations in Vietnam and improved slightly in the Philippines". If there is a recession central banks will compete to cut rates to weaken their currencies to increase exports. So, whether it came from the thaler or the Spanish peso, the $ will remain the reserve currency of the world. The US will sneeze the loudest.