Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It (Discovering America) - Hardcover

Brands, H. W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0292723415 ISBN 13: 9780292723412

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 2011

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review

Praise for H. W. Brands: "Brands [is] on the path to becoming the preeminent popular historian of his generation... There is no denying [his] talent for clear, cogent, and uncluttered prose." Chicago Tribune "Exuberant... Entertaining, lively... Brands [is] a wonderfully skilled narrative historian." Los Angeles Times "In this history of the US dollar, Brands details the key episodes that contributed to the rise of the 'greenback' as the world's pre-eminent currency. He asks what lessons previous financial failures (and successes) hold for policymakers dealing with the fallout of the 2008 crisis." - Survival, June-July 2012

About the Author

H. W. Brands is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin. He writes on American history and politics, with books including Traitor to His Class, Andrew Jackson, The Age of Gold, The First American, and TR. Several of his books have been bestsellers; two, Traitor to His Class and The First American, were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. He lectures frequently on historical and current events, and can be seen and heard on national and international television and radio programs.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0292723415
• ISBN 13: 9780292723412
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 147