The US dollar is losing its reserve status at a faster pace than generally accepted as many analysts have failed to account for last year's wild exchange rate moves, according to Stephen Jen.

The greenback's share in global reserves slid last year at 10 times the average speed of the past two decades as a number of countries looked for alternatives after Russia's invasion of Ukraine triggered sanctions, Jen and his Eurizon SLJ Capital colleague Joana Freire wrote in a note.

Adjusting for exchange rate movements, the US dollar has lost about 11 percent of its market share since 2016 and double that amount since 2008, they said.

"The dollar suffered a stunning collapse in 2022 in its market share as a reserve currency, presumably due to its muscular use of sanctions," Jen and Freire wrote. "Exceptional actions taken by the US and its allies against Russia have startled large reserve-holding countries," most of which are emerging economies from the so-called Global South, they said.

The remarks came as the White House said it is closely tracking developments in commercial real estate after recent strains in the banking sector, given that many smaller and mid-sized banks have "non-trivial" holdings in commercial real estate.

Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said that occupancy rates in commercial real estate were well below pre-Covid levels and delinquencies had risen a bit recently, although they remained low in historical terms.

Separately, Britain was the only country in Western Europe with double-digit inflation in March after it fell less than expected to 10.1 percent from February's 10.4 percent, official data showed yesterday. But that was well above the 9.8 percent forecast by economists.

The reading underlined expectations that Britain will suffer high inflation for longer than its peers due to its reliance on natural gas for heating and electricity, and the structure of government subsidies that smoothed out price changes.

Eurozone was not looking good either. Consumer inflation in the 20 nations sharing the euro eased to 6.9 percent from 8.5 percent, primarily on a rapid fall in energy costs as natural gas prices keep declining after their surge a year ago on Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Excluding unprocessed food and fuel, prices accelerated to 7.5 percent from 7.4 percent while an even narrower inflation measure that also strips out alcohol and tobacco picked up to 5.7 percent from 5.6 percent.

Persistently high core readings are why most European Central Bank policymakers have already said that rates will need to keep rising, despite a record-breaking 350 basis points of hikes since last July.

The US dollar has lost about 11 percent of its market share since 2016. Reuters

Dollar is losing reserve status 'faster than expected'