Goldman's economists suggest that 61% of a properly diversified foreign-exchange reserve would be in dollars, with 32% in euros and 7% in yen.

ECONOMIST: The dollar

There, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the leaders discussed the currency swap and foreign-exchange reserve pool ideas with their Russian, Indian and Brazilian peers.

FORBES: China's Central Bank Willing To Share $3 Trillion

Regardless of the amount of difficulty involved, the big four emerging markets plus South Africa said earlier this week they were considering setting up a foreign-exchange reserve pool and a currency-swap arrangement in an effort to avoid any credit crisis stemming from the advanced economies.

FORBES: China's Central Bank Willing To Share $3 Trillion

The second step would be for the PBC to perform dollar-for-yuan foreign exchange reserve swaps with African central banks, with China offering to split the seigniorage (the difference between the face value of currency and the cost to produce it) with the African nations as a form of foreign aid.

FORBES: China's Yuan Internationalization: Made In Africa, Not Hong Kong

But Dino Kos, a former chief of markets at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York who now works for Portales Partners, a research firm, notes that the yuan does not meet one of the most basic requirements of a reserve currency: other countries cannot use it to intervene in foreign-exchange markets because it is not freely convertible.

ECONOMIST: America��s debt crisis will be chronic, not acute