The Fate of the Dollar

Laymen and professionals will gain a lot from reading this book. Mayer turns what might otherwise be a boring or confusing topic into highly readable, informative, naturally evovling narrative that combines history, economics, politics and personalities. It is also scary because one can see our present and the likely future in this book and it ain't necesarily all sunlight and roses !Mayer does a good job of demystifying money with his introduction about money and banking. He then uses this basis to tell a fascinating story about the American dollar over the decades since Eisenhower. In doing so, he further educates the reader not only about money, banking and international finance, but also about how the history, politics, personalities and other fators affect money, banking and international finance and how they in turn are affected by them.There are good reasons why economics is called "the dismal science" and why many people consider the topic of money to be a semi-mystical art beyond the grasp of intelligent individuals who have not been initited into the secrets of that art. However, while this book gives a sense of why such views exist, the story that Mayer tells also illustrates fairly straightforward basic principles that pretty much anyone can understand. He does this in part by relating how British, American and other governments achieved (or could have achieved)economic and financial objectives by paying attention to basics and how such governments created or worsened economic or financial problems and disasters by not paying attention to those basics.For example, Mayer shows how the belief that sovereign nations would not default (and, in fact, could never default) on their international debts was just so much wishful and stupid thinking by both experienced governments and by experienced bankers who really should have known better and should have been more careful. This is especially so when Mayer shows how the decline in the value of the British pound wass a major contributing factor in the slow, but inexorible, demise of the powerful and strong British Empire. (Any lessons for the present American government ?) Not that this harsh lesson ever persuaded any bankers from making huge loans to the "Asian tigers" or to Russia for several years in similar circumstances just before those economies plummeted into disaster in the 1990's for reasons eerily similar to those pertaining to earlier dumb loans to sovereign nations.A further example that works its way throughout the book is the use of the American dollar as a currency of value that individuals and nations use in order to maintain their purchasing power. This is both a benefit and a problem for the United States and Mayer shows the reasons why.Many peopler might not read this book because it was written in 1980, before a number of major economic, financial and political events occurred in the last 25 years, both positive and negative. These include the 1987 stock market