Anthony Elson - The Global Currency Power of the US Dollar: Problems and Prospects

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This is the fifth book with a focus on a different aspect of globalization that I have written over the last 12 years. The work global or globalization appears in the title for all of them. In one sense, this output is a natural reflection of my interests in various themes of international economics that I have developed over a long career beginning with my graduate training in international affairs and economics at Columbia University, many years of service on the professional staff of the IMF, work as a consultant with the World Bank, and teaching at Duke, Johns Hopkins and Yale Universities.

In another sense, each of these books has a link with one of its predecessors, as in the preparation of each of them I discovered that there was a topic that I touched on in each one that I wanted to explore in more depth in a subsequent book. In my third book on the global financial crisis, I wanted to examine in much more detail, and with the benefit of time and further knowledge, a topic that I examined more briefly in 20092010 in the immediate wake of the crisis, when I was writing my first book. In this particular book, the key role of the US dollar as the de facto currency for the global economy was a topic that I touched on briefly in my previous book on the role of the United States in the global economy.

The subject of the dollar as a global currency is a fascinating topic, as our understanding of its role continues to evolve and the future prospects for its duration are often questioned. This book hopefully contributes in a useful, interesting and significant manner to this important topic. Since the early 1970s when the Bretton Woods system of the early post-World War II era broke down, the dollar has served as the main currency of the global economic and financial system by fiat, i.e., without any basis in treaty, as a reflection of the hegemonic role of the United States in that system and the convenience that private traders and institutions have found in using the dollar for cross-border transactions. This special role of the dollar has intensified with the expansion of economic and financial globalization in the last few decades. This book attempts to explain how this situation developed and the factors that have helped to keep it in place. The book also examines a number of defects and potential threats to the stability of the global financial system that can be associated with the current dollar-based reserve currency system. It then examines three different scenarios that could deal with those threats; the prospects for each of these should become clearer during the remainder of the current decade.

As much as possible, I have tried to make this book a self-contained exposition, where technical terms are spelled out rather than included with an assumption that they are familiar to the reader. As a result, I am hopeful that the book will appeal to a wide range of readers from students of public policy to a general audience with an interest in the role of the United States in the global economy, as well as to practitioners in the fields of foreign affairs and business who are not specialists in international economics and finance.

Governing Global Finance: The Evolution and Reform of the International Financial Architecture (2011)

Globalization and Development: Why East Asia Surged Ahead and Latin America Fell Behind (2014)

The Global Financial Crisis in Retrospect: Evolution, Resolution and Lessons for Prevention (2017)

The United States in the World Economy: Making Sense of Globalization (2019)