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From Bloomberg News reporter Saleha Mohsin, the untold story of how one of America’s most invincible institutions—the Treasury—has used the U.S. dollar to define America’s role in the world, and our economic future.
In 1995, Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin re-defined the next thirty years of currency policy with the mantra, “A strong dollar is in America’s interest.” That mantra held, ushering in exceptional prosperity and cheap foreign goods, but the strong dollar policy also played a role in the devastating hollowing out of America’s manufacturing sector. Meanwhile, abroad, the United States increasingly turned to the dollar as a weapon of war. In Paper Soldiers, Saleha Mohsin reveals how the Treasury Department has shaped U.S. policy at home and overseas by wielding the American dollar as a weapon—and what that means in a new age of crisis.
For decades, America has preferred its currency superpower-strong, the basis of a "strong dollar" policy that attracted foreign investors and pleased consumers. Drawing on Mohsin's unparalleled access to current and former Treasury officials like Robert Rubin, Steven Mnuchin, and Janet Yellen, Paper Soldiers traces that policy's intended and unintended consequences, including the rise of populist sentiment and trade war with China—culminating in an unprecedented attack on the dollar’s pristine status during the Trump presidency—and connects the dollar's weaponization from 9/11 to the deployment of crippling financial sanctions against Russia. Ultimately, Mohsin argues that, untethered from many of the economic assumptions of the last generation, the power and influence of the American dollar is now at stake.
With first-hand reporting and fresh analysis that illustrates the vast, often unappreciated power that the Treasury Department wields at home and abroad, Paper Soldiers tells the inside story of how we really got here—and the future not only of the almighty dollar, but the nation’s teetering role as a democratic superpower.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
March 19, 2024 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780593539125
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780593539125
- File size: 3492 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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January 15, 2024
An investigation of the back-and-forth between advocates of a strong dollar and those of a weak one. The U.S. dollar has long been weaponized, writes financial journalist Mohsin, most lately by the Biden administration using dollar-based sanctions against Iran and Russia. The result is precarious: "The dollar is no longer there for the greater good but for those who align with America." In 2001, some 73% of central bank foreign exchange funds were held in dollars, but that figure is now below 60%. Part of the problem is that administrations, apart from using the dollar as a weapon, have also not been able to decide whether the dollar should be strong or weak: Trump, for instance, initially held out for a weak dollar to increase the desirability of American goods abroad, but when foreign investors went fleeing, he changed his mind and bellowed demands for a strong dollar. Fortunately, he had a competent, if too compliant, treasury secretary in Steven Mnuchin, and the logic that "if the government was invested in keeping its currency strong, investors would have more reason to feel confident in bonds issued by the United States" held. However, if investors do flee, where will they go? There have been fears that the dollar will no longer be the world's chief currency, fears that have a basis in reality, but the leading competitors have even greater problems: The euro represents too small a market; the yuan, a state that few trust. Though knowing something about fiscal policy will help readers, Mohsin is a capable interpreter of the interaction between finance and politics. It's a messy business: Every time Congress dithers about the debt limit, foreigners begin to doubt the soundness of the dollar, which could turn out to have disastrous consequences. An engaging outing for financial policy wonks that should also serve as a warning to economic policymakers.COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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January 22, 2024
The U.S. dollar has become a tool for manipulating other countries, according to this incisive debut treatise. Bloomberg News journalist Mohsin traces the origins of the dollar’s weaponization to the 1944 meeting between Allied powers establishing that the postwar international financial system would be built on American currency, as well as Clinton-era Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin’s policy of maintaining a strong dollar by inspiring investors’ confidence. The far-reaching consequences included the rise of sanctions as the preferred method for exerting American policy preferences, as when the U.S. attempted to rein in Iran’s nuclear development program in 2012 by barring anyone doing business with the country from using the dollar, a policy that ended up tanking Iran’s national currency and “driving millions of Iranians deeper into poverty.” Mohsin brings to the proceedings a reporter’s eye for story and grounds the fiscal discussions in anecdotes about key Treasury staff, as in her description of the moment Stuart Levey, who oversaw the department’s sanctions office from 2004 to 2011, learned how much money his colleagues had uncovered in their efforts to freeze Libyan despot Muammar Gaddafi’s assets: “Sitting in a high-ceilinged fourth floor office at Treasury with a view of the Washington Monument, Levey’s jaw dropped... as he read the final figure for how much money his snoopers had found over the past two days: $30 billion.” It’s a thorough examination of how America has wielded economic influence to its own advantage across the globe. Agent: Matt Carlini, Javelin Literary.
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