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.

Benn Steil's column in Dow Jones' Financial News takes a critical look at the Washington debt duel.

Benn Steil's column in the July 11 edition of Dow Jones' Financial News takes a tour of the globe—from Stockholm to Sydney and Frankfurt to Washington—and shows why it is a dangerous delusion to believe that central banks can remedy our economic ills.

Benn Steil testifies before the Senate on the importance of regulatory reforms to make U.S. markets more resilient to the failures of individual financial institutions. He argues that well capitalized and regulated central derivatives clearinghouses have historically provided the best example of successful "safe-fail" risk management in the derivatives industry.

Benn Steil's op-ed in the May 24th edition of the Financial Times, co-authored with Manuel Hinds, examines what it would mean for the United States to be obliged to function, like most of the world, without an internationally accepted money. They show why the U.S. not being able to pay its foreign debts in conjured currency would, contrary to Paul Krugman's view, be a big deal.

Benn Steil's April column in Dow Jones' Financial News, co-authored with Paul Swartz, argues that the White House OMB's growth forecasts are systematically biased upwards, and that using the lower private or CBO growth assumptions results in about $1.75 trillion more debt over the next ten years than is implied by the president's recent budget.

Benn Steil's February column in Dow Jones' Financial News looks at last week's two big proposed transatlantic exchange mergers, arguing that, unlike the earlier round of high-profile tie-ups (when large takeover premiums were paid), these are being driven by recognition that all the big bourses are becoming uncompetitive in their once-core equity trading businesses.

Benn Steil's op-ed for Project Syndicate argues that the United States and Europe are putting the credibility of the Fed and the ECB at risk by relying on extraordinary central bank interventions as a substitute for resolving the bad assets dragging down private sector banks.

Benn Steil's January column in Dow Jones' Financial News, co-authored with Paul Swartz, argues that the German-led Irish bailout is floundering because the Irish public balance sheet cannot absorb further Irish bank debt.  Until the inevitable losses on this debt are finally allocated, largely to other European banks, investors will continue to be wary of holding any assets which could conceivably bear the brunt of such losses.

Benn Steil's October column in Dow Jones' Financial News argues that treating the symptoms rather than the causes of the current economic anemia will result in the same unbalanced and unsustainable recovery that followed the post-tech-bubble slump.

Benn Steil's September column in Dow Jones' Financial News argues that the "Volcker Rule" will not make insured deposits safer or crises less likely, as traditional bank lending creates riskier maturity mismatches than securities trading.

Benn Steil takes a satirical look at high-frequency trading.

Benn Steil and Paul Swartz's op-ed in the August 19 edition of the Wall Street Journal explains why the Fed must give up control over the setting of the Fed funds rate--or indeed any interest rate--in order to implement its announced exit strategy. But they argue that evidence from the eurozone suggests strongly that the Fed will be unwilling to relinquish control over rates.

Benn Steil's August column in Dow Jones' Financial News, co-authored with Paul Swartz, examines the cost of global imbalances from the perspective of the world's leading holders of foreign exchange reserves, China and Japan.

Benn Steil's op-ed in the June 23rd edition of the Financial Times explains why FDR's Treasury in the 1930s cajoled the Chinese to peg to the dollar, in stark contrast to Obama's Treasury today, which wants the peg ended.  The ambition the two administrations shared is a weaker dollar.

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's June column in Dow Jones' Financial News, co-authored with Paul Swartz, shows how mass Russian and Chinese selling of Fannie and Freddie debt in 2008 severely exacerbated the financial crisis.  Contrary to the arguments of Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and others, they show that there are very real dangers inherent in America's outsized reliance on foreign government financing.

Benn Steil's April column in Dow Jones' Financial News argues that blaming the euro for Greece's woes is misguided.  Greece has been in constant trouble with foreign creditors since its independence in 1832, even under the reign of the "sovereign" drachma.  Since Greece's debt was predominantly euro-denominated even before it joined the eurozone, staying outside it would only have brought the crisis to a head earlier - as with Iceland.

Benn Steil's March column in Dow Jones' Financial News argues that the way we tax banks is at odds with how we wish them to behave, and new proposed bank taxes only make it worse.

Benn Steil and Peter Wallison argue that trying alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before the military commission established by Congress is better than the Obama administration pretending that it accepts the legal implications of acquittal by a civilian court.

Benn Steil's January column in Dow Jones' Financial News argues that the monetary forces behind the crashes of 1929 and 2008 were very similar.  In the 1920s, as in the mid-2000s, Fed officials mistakenly thought that they had found, in the practice of trying to stabilize a price index, the holy grail of monetary policy. In consequence, central bankers are once again grasping for a new orthodoxy.