The Dollar Trap
The Dollar Trap

Author: Eswar S. Prasad

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-08-25

Total Pages: 438

ISBN-13: 0691168520

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Why the dollar is—and will remain—the dominant global currency The U.S. dollar's dominance seems under threat. The near collapse of the U.S. financial system in 2008–2009, political paralysis that has blocked effective policymaking, and emerging competitors such as the Chinese renminbi have heightened speculation about the dollar’s looming displacement as the main reserve currency. Yet, as The Dollar Trap powerfully argues, the financial crisis, a dysfunctional international monetary system, and U.S. policies have paradoxically strengthened the dollar’s importance. Eswar Prasad examines how the dollar came to have a central role in the world economy and demonstrates that it will remain the cornerstone of global finance for the foreseeable future. Marshaling a range of arguments and data, and drawing on the latest research, Prasad shows why it will be difficult to dislodge the dollar-centric system. With vast amounts of foreign financial capital locked up in dollar assets, including U.S. government securities, other countries now have a strong incentive to prevent a dollar crash. Prasad takes the reader through key contemporary issues in international finance—including the growing economic influence of emerging markets, the currency wars, the complexities of the China-U.S. relationship, and the role of institutions like the International Monetary Fund—and offers new ideas for fixing the flawed monetary system. Readers are also given a rare look into some of the intrigue and backdoor scheming in the corridors of international finance. The Dollar Trap offers a panoramic analysis of the fragile state of global finance and makes a compelling case that, despite all its flaws, the dollar will remain the ultimate safe-haven currency.

Speculation And The Dollar
Speculation And The Dollar

Author: Laurence Krause

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-07-11

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 1000312895

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I began serious consideration of the issues and subject matter that comprise this book as a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In need of a dissertation topic and vaguely curious about international monetary economics, I decided to sit in on Leonard Rapping's undergraduate course on international finance. Needless to say, I was soon hooked. Within several months I was teaching my own course on international money and beginning to write an outline of what would become my doctoral dissertation on foreign exchange speculation. Once completed the dissertation thesis became this basis for this book.

Speculation And The Dollar
Speculation And The Dollar

Author: Laurence Krause

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-07-11

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1000241017

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I began serious consideration of the issues and subject matter that comprise this book as a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. In need of a dissertation topic and vaguely curious about international monetary economics, I decided to sit in on Leonard Rapping's undergraduate course on international finance. Needless to say, I was soon hooked. Within several months I was teaching my own course on international money and beginning to write an outline of what would become my doctoral dissertation on foreign exchange speculation. Once completed the dissertation thesis became this basis for this book.

Early Speculative Bubbles and Increases in the Supply of Money
Early Speculative Bubbles and Increases in the Supply of Money

Author:

Publisher: Ludwig von Mises Institute

Published: 2009-03-16

Total Pages: 147

ISBN-13: 1610164555

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The Housing Bubble was hardly the first in human history. What's eluded historians is the same issue that eludes commentators today: the underlying cause of bubbles. This book is the first (and only) book to solve the mystery of the most famous bubble in world history: Tulipmania in 17th century Netherlands. It Is a legendary event but explanations have been lacking. People blame irrational exuberance, free markets, and an unleashed aristocracy. Douglas French takes a different route: he follows the money to prove that the bubble resulted from a government intervention that dramatically exploded the money supply and fueled the tulip-price bubble – not altogether different from modern bubbles. This book was French’s Master’s thesis written under the direction of Murray Rothbard and examining three of the most famous speculative bubble episodes in history through the lens of Austrian Business Cycle Theory. Although each of these episodes is well documented, this book examines the monetary interventions that engendered each of these events showing that not only the Mississippi Bubble and the South Sea Bubble were caused by government meddling, but Tulipmania was as well. Tulipmania was unique in that it was the sound money policy of the Dutch combined with free coinage laws that led to an acute increase in the supply of money and fostered an atmosphere that was ripe for speculation and malinvestment, manifesting itself in the intense trading of tulip bulbs. The author examines not only the Mississippi Bubble but also the life and monetary theories of its architect, John Law. Professor Joe Salerno calls Law the world’s first macroeconomist who implemented a Keynesian monetary system in France nearly two hundred years before Keynes was born. At the same time across the English Channel, a nearly bankrupt British government looked on with envy at Law’s system, believing that he was working a financial miracle. It was anything but this and investors in both countries were devastated. Although these episodes occurred centuries ago, readers will find the events eerily similar to today’s bubbles and busts: low interest rates, easy credit terms, widespread public participation, bankrupt governments, price inflation, frantic attempts by government to keep the booms going, and government bailouts of companies after the crash. When will we learn? We first have to get cause and effect in history straight. This book is an excellent contribution to that effort.

The Speculation Economy
The Speculation Economy

Author: Lawrence E. Mitchell

Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com

Published: 2008-11-17

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 1458722732

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The first book to reveal the deep historical roots of the modern corporate obsession with stock price - a major cause of recent scandals like those at Enron and WorldComDetails how the rise of the modern corporation created the modern stock market - and why this led to an economy dominated by stock speculationAmerican companies once focused exclusively on providing the best products and services. But today, most corporations are obsessed with maximizing their stock prices, resulting in short-term thinking and the kind of cook-the-books corruption seen in the Enron and WorldCom scandals. How did this happen?In this groundbreaking book, Lawrence E. Mitchell traces the origins of the problem to the first decade of the 20th century, when industrialists and bankers began merging existing companies into huge ''combines''- today's giant corporations - so they could profit by manufacturing and selling stock in these new entities. He describes and analyzes the legal changes that made this possible, the federal regulatory efforts that missed the significance of this transforming development, and the changes in American society and culture that led more and more Americans to enter the market, turning from relatively safe bonds to riskier common stock in the hopes of becoming rich. Financiers and the corporations they controlled encouraged this trend, but as stock ownership expanded and businesses were increasingly forced to cater to stockholders' ''get rich quick'' expectations, a subtle but revolutionary shift in the nature of the American economy occurred: finance no longer served industry; instead, industry began to serve finance.The Speculation Economy analyzes the history behind the opening of this economic Pandora's box, the root cause of so many modern acts of corporate malfeasance.

Strained Relations
Strained Relations

Author: Michael D. Bordo

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2015-03-02

Total Pages: 453

ISBN-13: 022605151X

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During the twentieth century, foreign-exchange intervention was sometimes used in an attempt to solve the fundamental trilemma of international finance, which holds that countries cannot simultaneously pursue independent monetary policies, stabilize their exchange rates, and benefit from free cross-border financial flows. Drawing on a trove of previously confidential data, Strained Relations reveals the evolution of US policy regarding currency market intervention, and its interaction with monetary policy. The authors consider how foreign-exchange intervention was affected by changing economic and institutional circumstances—most notably the abandonment of the international gold standard—and how political and bureaucratic factors affected this aspect of public policy.

What Money Can't Buy
What Money Can't Buy

Author: Michael J. Sandel

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2012-04-24

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1429942584

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In What Money Can't Buy, renowned political philosopher Michael J. Sandel rethinks the role that markets and money should play in our society. Should we pay children to read books or to get good grades? Should we put a price on human life to decide how much pollution to allow? Is it ethical to pay people to test risky new drugs or to donate their organs? What about hiring mercenaries to fight our wars, outsourcing inmates to for-profit prisons, auctioning admission to elite universities, or selling citizenship to immigrants willing to pay? In his New York Times bestseller What Money Can't Buy, Michael J. Sandel takes up one of the biggest ethical questions of our time: Isn't there something wrong with a world in which everything is for sale? If so, how can we prevent market values from reaching into spheres of life where they don't belong? What are the moral limits of markets? Over recent decades, market values have crowded out nonmarket norms in almost every aspect of life. Without quite realizing it, Sandel argues, we have drifted from having a market economy to being a market society. In Justice, an international bestseller, Sandel showed himself to be a master at illuminating, with clarity and verve, the hard moral questions we confront in our everyday lives. Now, in What Money Can't Buy, he provokes a debate that's been missing in our market-driven age: What is the proper role of markets in a democratic society, and how can we protect the moral and civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?

The Future of the Dollar
The Future of the Dollar

Author: Eric Helleiner

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2012-09-15

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 0801457491

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For half a century, the United States has garnered substantial political and economic benefits as a result of the dollar's de facto role as a global currency. In recent years, however, the dollar's preponderant position in world markets has come under challenge. The dollar has been more volatile than ever against foreign currencies, and various nations have switched to non-dollar instruments in their transactions. China and the Arab Gulf states continue to hold massive amounts of U.S. government obligations, in effect subsidizing U.S. current account deficits, and those holdings are a point of potential vulnerability for American policy. What is the future of the U.S. dollar as an international currency? Will predictions of its demise end up just as inaccurate as those that have accompanied major international financial crises since the early 1970s? Analysts disagree, often profoundly, in their answers to these questions. In The Future of the Dollar, leading scholars of dollar's international role bring multidisciplinary perspectives and a range of contrasting predictions to the question of the dollar's future. This timely book provides readers with a clear sense of why such disagreements exist and it outlines a variety of future scenarios and the possible political implications for the United States and the world.

Investing Demystified
Investing Demystified

Author: Lars Kroijer

Publisher: Pearson UK

Published: 2013-09-06

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 0273781529

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Don’t spend your time worrying whether you can beat the markets: you don’t need to beat them to be a successful investor. By showing you how to build a simple and rational portfolio and tailor it to your specific needs, Investing Demystified will help you generate superior returns. With his straightforward and jargon-free advice, Lars Kroijer simplies the often complex world of finance and tells you everything you need to know – and everything that you don’t need to worry about – in order to make the most from your investments. In Investing Demystified you will: • Discover the mix of stocks, bonds and cash needed for a top performing portfolio • Learn why the most broadly diversi_ ed and simplest portfolio makes the most sense • Understand the right level of risk for you and how this affects your investments • Find out why a low cost approach will yield bene_ ts whilst leaving you with a higher quality portfolio • Understand the implications of tax and liquidity