Overview

An award-winning economic journalist on why the US dollar is positioned to maintain global primacy—and what that means for America and the world Prophecies that the dollar will lose its status as the world's dominant currency have echoed for decades—and are increasing in volume. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts claim that Bitcoin or other blockchain-based monetary units will replace the dollar. Foreign policy hawks warn that China's renminbi poses a lethal threat to the greenback. And sound money zealots predict that mounting US debt and inflation will surely erode the dollar's value to the point of irrelevancy. Contra the doomsayers, Paul Blustein shows that the dollar's standing atop the world's currency pyramid is impregnable, barring catastrophic policy missteps by the US government. Recounting how the United States has wielded the dollar to impose devastating sanctions against adversaries, Blustein explains that although targets such as Russia have found ways to limit the damage, Washington's financial weaponry will retain potency long into the future. His message, however, is that America must not be complacent about the dollar; the great power that its supremacy confers comes with commensurate responsibility.

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Reviews

“Economics may be the dismal science, but nobody told Paul Blustein. He has given us a lively and authoritative account of why the international dominance of the dollar could continue.”—James M. Boughton, author of Harry White and the American Creed: How a Federal Bureaucrat Created the Modern Global Economy (and Failed to Get the Credit) “Few people write about international economic issues more clearly and entertainingly than Paul Blustein. In King Dollar he applies those skills to dismantling the ever-recurring arguments that the status of the dollar as the world’s preeminent currency is under threat.”—Liaquat Ahamed, Pulitzer-prize winning author of Lords of Finance “A must read for anyone worried about the future of the dollar in a world split by geopolitical rivalries and rapid innovations in currencies and payments systems.”—Kristin Forbes, Professor at MIT-Sloan School of Management

“Economics may be the dismal science, but nobody told Paul Blustein. He has given us a lively and authoritative account of why the international dominance of the dollar could continue.”—James M. Boughton, author of Harry White and the American Creed: How a Federal Bureaucrat Created the Modern Global Economy (and Failed to Get the Credit) “Few people write about international economic issues more clearly and entertainingly than Paul Blustein. In King Dollar he applies those skills to dismantling the ever-recurring arguments that the status of the dollar as the world’s preeminent currency is under threat.”—Liaquat Ahamed, Pulitzer-prize winning author of Lords of Finance “A must read for anyone worried about the future of the dollar in a world split by geopolitical rivalries and rapid innovations in currencies and payments systems.”—Kristin Forbes, Professor at MIT-Sloan School of Management “In this sizzling account of why the dollar has survived, Paul Blustein spins a tale that reaches from nineteenth-century bank porters to the volatile Obama-Trump-Biden years. Blustein is the unrivaled master of making banking and money compelling, clear, and lively.”—Roger Lowenstein, author of Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War

Author Information

Paul Blustein is the author of several critically acclaimed books about global economic affairs. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin and Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, he spent much of his career as a reporter at the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. He lives in Kamakura, Japan.

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