In this ambitious and groundbreaking book on the history of the dollar, financial journalist and economic scholar Brendan Greeley presents a new argument about the origins of American money—and the people and countries that surrendered to it.
The author says: The dollar, America’s currency, is a global currency - almost all countries of the world conclude international contracts in dollars, and in 2023, the dollar reserves of central banks around the world amounted to approximately 6.7 trillion dollars, three times more than any other currency.Today, US global dominance rests largely on its ability to issue unlimited Treasury bonds sold around the world, dollars that supported America's massive growth in the 20th century and financed its massive wars in the 21st century. The US dollar and American power have become two sides of the same coin.In this fascinating history spanning five centuries, Brendan Greeley argues that America's sovereignty over the dollar is an illusion, that the dollar has empowered and subverted nations long before it reached colonial shores, and that no nation or monarch has or can truly control it. Going back to the dollar's origins as a thaler in the silver mines of St. Joachimsthal in the 15th century, Greeley reveals how the dollar initially flourished as a commodity for merchants and bankers, as a large silver coin that commanded the world's trustAll in all, even as the miners who extracted it from the ground had difficulty getting paid with that same silver. Greeley traces a complex, captivating path across time and space, from the industrial collapse in the heart of the Spanish silver empire in the seventeenth century, through the emergence of American paper dollars in colonial Maryland, the New Orleans bank bankruptcies of the nineteenth century, and the small town of Hawarden, Iowa, which issued its own dollars during theGreat Depression. At every surprising turn, Greeley upends prevailing notions about global currencies, revealing the historical tension between how the dollar is issued and who it actually serves.
The book "The Mighty Dollar" is distinguished by its unique comprehensiveness, as it debunks the myth that America invented or actually controlled the dollar. Through meticulous research and vivid stories of merchants, kings, and commoners past and present, Greeley shows how the dollar became America's most important export, creating a massive financial industryIt enriches the wealthy, while the rest of the country's sectors suffer.
