Brendan Greeley, "The Almighty Dollar: 500 Years of the World's Most Powerful Money" (Crown, 2026)
About this episode
Brendan Greeley discusses the complex history and global impact of the dollar in his book 'The Almighty Dollar'.
America’s money is global money—nearly every nation in the world writes international contracts in dollars, and in 2023, central banks around the world held nearly $6.7 trillion in dollar reserves, three times any other currency. Today, the United States’ global hegemony rests largely on its ability to produce unlimited treasury bonds that are sold around the world, dollars that supported America’s explosive growth in the twentieth century and funded its massive wars in the twenty-first. American power and the American dollar have become synonymous.Yet in this brilliant 500-year history The Almighty Dollar: 500 Years of the World's Most Powerful Money (Crown, 2026), Brendan Greeley argues that America’s sovereignty over the dollar is an illusion—that the dollar had already empowered and destroyed nations long before it washed up on colonial shores, and that no country or king has or can ever truly control it. Reaching back to the dollar’s birth as the taler in the 15th-century silver mines of St. Joachimsthal, Greeley reveals how the dollar first thrived as a commodity for merchants and bankers—a big, silver coin that was trusted around the world, even as the…
People in this episode
Guest: Brendan Greeley
Topics covered
- economic history
- global currency
- American hegemony
- dollar history
- financial systems
Keywords
- dollar
- currency
- economic power
- financial history
- Brendan Greeley
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Crown
Books & works: The Almighty Dollar: 500 Years of the World's Most Powerful Money
Places: America, United States, St. Joachimsthal, Maryland, New Orleans
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