Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It (Discovering America)
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Narrated by:
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James Killavey
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By:
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H. W. Brands
About this listen
How did the greenback achieve 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 US 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 US 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 US 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.
The book is published by University of Texas Press.
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Story
Shortly after arriving in the White House in early 1933, Franklin Roosevelt took the United States off the gold standard. His opponents thought his decision unwise at best and ruinous at worst. But they could not have been more wrong. With The Money Makers, Eric Rauchway tells the absorbing story of how FDR and his advisors pulled the levers of monetary policy to save the domestic economy and propel the United States to unprecedented prosperity and superpower status.
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Excellent over view and easily understandable
- By L. Ford Ballard, Jr. on 01-15-19
By: Eric Rauchway
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Volcker
- The Triumph of Persistence
- By: William L. Silber
- Narrated by: Ross Douglas
- Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Over the course of nearly half a century, five American presidents - three Democrats and two Republicans - have relied on the financial acumen, and the integrity, of Paul A. Volcker. During his tenure as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, when he battled the Great Inflation of the 1970s, Volcker did nothing less than restore the reputation of an American financial system on the verge of collapse.
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Required Reading for 2022 Economy
- By Marc Uknis on 11-19-22
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Collusion
- How Central Bankers Rigged the World
- By: Nomi Prins
- Narrated by: Ellen Archer
- Length: 14 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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In this searing exposé, former Wall Street insider Nomi Prins shows how the 2007-2008 financial crisis turbo-boosted the influence of central bankers and triggered a massive shift in the world order. Packed with tantalizing details about the elite players orchestrating the world economy, Collusion takes the listener inside the most discreet conversations at exclusive retreats like Jackson Hole and Davos. A work of meticulous reporting and bracing analysis, Collusion will change the way we understand the new world of international finance.
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Fair history survey, lazy characterizations
- By Philo on 05-09-18
By: Nomi Prins
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The Battle of Bretton Woods
- John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order
- By: Benn Steil
- Narrated by: Philip Rose
- Length: 15 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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When turmoil strikes world monetary and financial markets, leaders invariably call for "a new Bretton Woods" to prevent catastrophic economic disorder and defuse political conflict. The name of the remote New Hampshire town where representatives of 44 nations gathered in July 1944, in the midst of the century's second great war, has become shorthand for enlightened globalization.
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Is this a mystery, a history or an economics book?
- By Neil on 04-23-13
By: Benn Steil
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Borrowed Time
- Two Centuries of Booms, Busts, and Bailouts at Citi
- By: James Freeman, Vern McKinley
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 11 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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To save the economy and keep Citi afloat in 2008, the government provided huge infusions of cash through multiple bailouts that frustrated and angered the American public. But, as Wall Street Journal writer James Freeman and financial expert Vern McKinley reveal, the 2008 crisis was just one of many disasters Citi has experienced since its founding more than 200 years ago. In Borrowed Time they reveal Citi’s disturbing history of instability and government support. It’s a story that neither Citi nor Washington wants told.
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Biased
- By CF on 08-09-19
By: James Freeman, and others
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Rainbow's End: The Crash of 1929
- Oxford University Press: Pivotal Moments in US History
- By: Maury Klein
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 11 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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The first major history of the Crash in over a decade, Rainbow's End tells the story of the stock market collapse in a colorful, swift-moving narrative that blends a vivid portrait of the 1920s with an intensely gripping account of Wall Street's greatest catastrophe. The book offers a vibrant picture of a world full of plungers, powerful bankers, corporate titans, millionaire brokers, and buoyantly optimistic stock market bulls.
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Plenty of fine detail, especially of the 1920s
- By Philo on 04-18-13
By: Maury Klein
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American Default
- The Untold Story of FDR, the Supreme Court, and the Battle over Gold
- By: Sebastian Edwards
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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The American economy is strong in large part because nobody believes that America would ever default on its debt. Yet in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt did just that, when in a bid to pull the country out of depression, he depreciated the US dollar in relation to gold, effectively annulling all debt contracts. American Default is the story of this forgotten chapter in America's history.
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Superb
- By Jean on 12-08-18
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America's Bank
- The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve
- By: Roger Lowenstein
- Narrated by: Robertson Dean
- Length: 9 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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A tour de force of historical reportage, America’s Bank illuminates the tumultuous era and remarkable personalities that spurred the unlikely birth of America’s modern central bank, the Federal Reserve. Today, the Fed is the bedrock of the financial landscape, yet the fight to create it was so protracted and divisive that it seems a small miracle that it was ever established. For nearly a century, America, alone among developed nations, refused to consider any central or organizing agency in its financial system.
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Important and Intriguing
- By Jean on 11-02-15
By: Roger Lowenstein
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An Extraordinary Time
- The End of the Postwar Boom and the Return of the Ordinary Economy
- By: Marc Levinson
- Narrated by: James Foster
- Length: 10 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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A sweeping reappraisal of the last sixty years of world history, An Extraordinary Time describes how the postwar economic boom dissipated, undermining faith in government, destabilizing the global financial system, and forcing us to come to terms with how tumultuous our economy really is.
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Good review of crucial turning point in history
- By Philo on 11-22-16
By: Marc Levinson
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The Story of Silver
- How the White Metal Shaped America and the Modern World
- By: William L. Silber
- Narrated by: Jim Meskimen
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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This is the story of silver's transformation from soft money during the 19th century to hard asset today, and how manipulations of the white metal by American president Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1930s and by the richest man in the world, Texas oil baron Nelson Bunker Hunt, during the 1970s altered the course of American and world history. FDR pumped up the price of silver to help jump start the US economy during the Great Depression, but this move weakened China, which was then on the silver standard, and facilitated Japan's rise to power before World War II.
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A Detailed Account of Silver's Monetary History
- By Brandy Crosby on 01-11-21
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When Money Dies
- The Nightmare of Deficit Spending, Devaluation, and Hyperinflation in Weimar, Germany
- By: Adam Fergusson
- Narrated by: Antony Ferguson
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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When Money Dies is the classic history of what happens when a nations currency depreciates beyond recovery. In 1923, with its currency effectively worthless (the exchange rate in December of that year was one dollar to 4,200,000,000,000 marks), the German republic was all but reduced to a barter economy. Expensive cigars, artworks, and jewels were routinely exchanged for staples such as bread; a cinema ticket could be bought for a lump of coal; and a bottle of paraffin for a silk shirt....
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Useless details, missing the big points
- By Jean Le Lupi on 07-04-12
By: Adam Fergusson
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Currency Wars
- The Making of the Next Global Crises
- By: James Rickards
- Narrated by: Walter Dixon
- Length: 9 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1971, President Nixon imposed national price controls and took the United States off the gold standard, an extreme measure intended to end an ongoing currency war that had destroyed faith in the U.S. dollar. Today we are engaged in a new currency war, and this time the consequences will be far worse than those that confronted Nixon. Currency wars are one of the most destructive and feared outcomes in international economics.
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don't be misled
- By peter on 04-01-12
By: James Rickards
What listeners say about Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It (Discovering America)
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Philo
- 05-25-18
A good, clear telling of the basic story
I didn't hear anything surprising here, having read many books on this history, but I felt walking back over the basic narrative was valuable. It is a fine refresher. It has a sort of thumbnail coverage of all the biggest players and events. I would like more at the end about the dollar's risks post-2008 and going forward (and this book is a few years old), but there is a nice, if fairly quick, summation of the situation. I found this book highly listenable, as I pretty much listened straight through. There is essentially nothing on cryptocurrency, which makes sense, as this emerging history is newer than the book.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Kico M
- 07-17-21
Factual and interesting
This is a very factual and accurate book. It brings not only the history of the Dollar and how it became a global currency, but its challenges and plenty of interesting side stories.
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- Kerrick W.
- 06-29-21
Never Again Narrarator
Without a doubt, this is the worst narrator I’ve ever experienced. The terrible cadence along with irregular phrasing combine with a speech impediment to create a nearly completely unlistenable experience.
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1 person found this helpful