A remarkably deft work of storytelling that reveals how the blueprint for the postwar economic order was actually drawn.

A fascinating intellectual history of monetary nationalism from the ancient world to the present exploring why, in its modern incarnation, it represents the single greatest threat to globalization.

Over the past two decades, another form of economic exchange besides imports and exports has risen to a level of vastly greater significance and political concern: the purchase and sale of financial assets across borders.

FDR Treasury official Harry Dexter White was the leading architect of the Bretton Woods international monetary and financial system. But he was also a vital agent for Soviet intelligence in the 1930s and '40s. This article brings to bear startling new archival evidence to illuminate his motives.

Global financial instability has sparked a surge in "monetary nationalism" -- the idea that countries must make and control their own currencies. But globalization and monetary nationalism are a dangerous combination, a cause of financial crises and geopolitical tension. The world needs to abandon unwanted currencies, replacing them with dollars, euros, and multinational currencies as yet unborn.

As trade flows expanded and trade agreements proliferated after World War II, governments—most notably the United States—increasingly came to use their power over imports and exports to influence the behavior of other countries.  But trade is not the only way in which nations interact economically. Over the past two decades, another form of economic exchange has risen to a level of vastly greater significance and political concern: the purchase and sale of financial assets across borders.

Benn Steil's article in the Spring/Summer edition of the CATO Journal argues that restraining excessive debt accumulation will require significant changes in the U.S. corporate taxation regime and the principles underlying the conduct of U.S. monetary policy.

Benn Steil argues that the world has no attractive alternatives to the current dollar-based international monetary system, but that the dollar's days of coasting on the accomplishments of the Volcker Fed are over. The Fed must demonstrate to the world anew that the dollar is a reliable long-term store of value.

In the Spring/Summer 2007 issue of The Cato Journal, Benn Steil writes on "Federal Reserve Policy in the Face of Crisis." He argues
that the global monetary order of national fiat currencies represents the
greatest threat to globalization.

Monetary Policy as Globalization's Achilles' Heel