The dollar's demise, what me worry?

Who's going to ditch the American dollar next? And should we care?

Late last month, the United Arab Emirates became the latest country to shift more of its currency reserves away from the dollar, joining Russia, Switzerland, Venezuela and others.

Those moves come amid ambiguous signals from China recently about possibly pulling back from the dollar, and recent word from Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil producer, that it would prefer payments for oil, typically priced in dollars, in euros.

But currency experts say that this turn away from the dollar is not likely to do any long-term damage to the currency's value for a number of reasons. First, the motives of central banks that are adding other currencies to their reserves do not appear to be driven by the belief that the euro will eventually supplant the dollar as the world's key currency. Rather, these central banks are doing what investors typically do to minimize risk: diversifying their portfolios.

Moreover, the amount of currency moved so far has been relatively small in a global market that trades trillions of dollars a day — only about $2 billion in the case of the United Arab Emirates, for example.

"There is some indication that central banks are moving to diversify reserves, but it's at a very slow pace," said David Powell, a currency analyst with IDEAglobal. "Is it the start of a massive shift out of the dollar? I would say no."