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From the New York Timesâbestselling historian and two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, â[a] compact summation of our nationâs monetary historyâ (Shepherd Express). Â The world runs on the US dollar. From Washington to Beijing, governments, businesses, and individuals rely on the dollar to conduct commerce and invest profitably and safely. But how did the greenback achieve this planetary dominance a mere century and a half after President Lincoln issued the first currency backed only by the creditâand credibilityâof the federal government? Â In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollarâs astonishing rise to become the worldâs principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollarâs changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how Americaâs economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morganâs bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Rooseveltâs handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollarâs dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the powerâand the enormous risksâof the dollarâs worldwide reign. |
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