Greenback planet : how the dollar conquered the world and threatened civilization as we know it / H.W. Brands.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brands, H. W.

Series:

Discovering America

Discovering America series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Dollar, American--History.

Dollar, American.

Monetary policy--United States.

Monetary policy.

International finance.

Dollar, American--History--United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vi, 139 p. )

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

The world runs on the U.S. dollar. From Washington to Beijing, governments, businesses, and individuals rely on the dollar to conduct commerce and invest profitably and safely—even after the global financial meltdown in 2008 revealed the potentially catastrophic cost of the dollar's hegemony. 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 credit—and credibility—of the federal government? In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's 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 dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's 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. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's 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 dollar's 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 power—and the enormous risks—of the dollar's worldwide reign.

Contents:

Fiat lucre : 1863-1907

Strong and stronger : 1907-1928

Skulls and bones : 1929-1944

The view from Mount Washington : 1944-1963

Floating, floating

: 1963-1973

Petrodollars, Eurodollars and the invincible yen : 1973-1989

Bubble and boil : 1990-2002

Be nice to your creditors : 2003-.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

9780292735798

0292735790

OCLC:

768770922