Interview with Barry Eichengreen, author of Money Beyond Borders: Global Currencies from Croesus to Crypto
Barry Eichengreen, author of Money Beyond Borders: Global Currencies from Croesus to Crypto recommends a super set of books! Before jumping into the interview, please check out Barry's book:
Description from Bookshop.org: (All links earn commission from purchases)
Money Beyond Borders: Global Currencies from Croesus to Crypto
A 2,500-year history of international currencies that reveals new insights about the future of the U.S. dollar—as well as crypto and central bank digital currencies
Doubts about the international dominance of the dollar are only growing amid worries about tariffs, political dysfunction, and fraying international alliances. Will the dollar continue to reign supreme? In Money Beyond Borders, the leading authority on international currencies, Barry Eichengreen, puts the dollar’s prospects in deep historical perspective by chronicling the entire history of cross-border currencies, from the invention of coins in the seventh century BCE to the cryptocurrencies of today and the central bank digital currencies of tomorrow.
Money Beyond Borders recounts how Greek and Roman coins became the first true international currencies. It tells how the Florentine gold florin became the “greenback of the Renaissance,” and how it was succeeded by Spanish silver and a Dutch fiat currency. The book explains why the British pound dominated the international economy in the nineteenth century, why the dollar rose to the top during World War II, and why the dollar has survived predictions of the imminent loss of its preeminence since the 1970s.
The long history of international currencies shows that the same factors that encourage their widespread use eventually lead to their abandonment. Money Beyond Borders makes a powerful case that the dollar is now on the downside of this cycle, and it considers who the winners and losers will be when there is flight away from the greenback. Revealing important patterns in the life cycles of international currencies over the past 2,500 years, the book offers valuable lessons and insights about how currencies rise—and why they fall.
Buy On:
Bookshop.org UK
Bookshop.org US
Waterstones
Q. Do you have a favourite smart thinking book (and why that book)?
Veeck As In Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck by Bill Veeck. Description from Bookshop.org: (All links earn commission from purchases)
Business books are a much denigrated genre, and rightly so. But my favorite smart thinking book is the best business book of all time, “Veeck as in Wreck.” This is ostensibly a sports book by the impecunious one-time owner of the St. Louis Browns and Chicago White Sox baseball teams. In reality, it is a highly entertaining and insightful business book by the entrepreneur who pioneered everything from exploding scoreboards to team mascots and postgame fireworks displays. Wisdom is where you find it.
Veeck As In Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck
Bill Veeck was an inspired team builder, a consummate showman, and one of the greatest baseball men ever involved in the game.
His classic autobiography, written with the talented sportswriter Ed Linn, is an uproarious book packed with information about the history of baseball and tales of players and owners, including some of the most entertaining stories in all of sports literature.
Buy On:
Bookshop.org US
Q. What's the most recent smart thinking book you've read (and how would you rate it)?
The Means of Prediction: How AI Really Works by Maximilian Kasy. Description from Bookshop.org: (All links earn commission from purchases)
I recently read (and give five stars) to Maximilian Kasy’s “The Means of Prediction: How AI really Works (and Who Benefits).” Kasy argues that engineers, entrepreneurs and corporations are shaping Artificial Intelligence to advance their own interests and not those of society, and that governments must regulate the technology to address this problem. In developing his argument, the author provides an admirably clear and compact explanation – the best one out there – of what AI is, and what it can and cannot do.
The Means of Prediction: How AI Really Works
An eye-opening examination of how power—not technology—will define life with AI.
AI is inescapable, from its mundane uses online to its increasingly consequential decision-making in courtrooms, job interviews, and wars. The ubiquity of AI is so great that it might produce public resignation—a sense that the technology is our shared fate.
As economist Maximilian Kasy shows in The Means of Prediction, artificial intelligence, far from being an unstoppable force, is irrevocably shaped by human decisions—choices made to date by the ownership class that steers its development and deployment. Kasy shows that the technology of AI is ultimately not that complex. It is insidious, however, in its capacity to steer results to its owners’ wants and ends. Kasy clearly and accessibly explains the fundamental principles on which AI works, and, in doing so, reveals that the real conflict isn’t between humans and machines, but between those who control the machines and the rest of us.
The Means of Prediction offers a powerful vision of the future of AI: a future not shaped by technology, but by the technology’s owners. Amid a deluge of debates about technical details, new possibilities, and social problems, Kasy cuts to the core issue: Who controls AI’s objectives, and how is this control maintained? The answer lies in what he calls “the means of prediction,” or the essential resources required for building AI systems: data, computing power, expertise, and energy. As Kasy shows, in a world already defined by inequality, one of humanity’s most consequential technologies has been and will be steered by those already in power.
Against those stakes, Kasy offers an elegant framework both for understanding AI’s capabilities and for designing its public control. He makes a compelling case for democratic control over AI objectives as the answer to mounting concerns about AI's risks and harms. The Means of Prediction is a revelation, both an expert undressing of a technology that has masqueraded as more complicated and a compelling call for public oversight of this transformative technology.
Buy On:
Bookshop.org UK
Bookshop.org US
Waterstones
Q. Do you have a favourite childhood book?
The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss. Description from Bookshop.org: (All links earn commission from purchases)
Childhood covers a lot of ground. For an elementary schoolchild, you couldn’t beat the “Cat in the Hat” books, however politically incorrect these might currently be. As a teenager I went through phases, reading everything by one author before moving on to another author, from Tolstoy to Somerset Maugham to Ross Macdonald.
The Cat in the Hat
A rainy day turns into a wild romp when the Cat in the Hat and his troublemaking friends, Thing One and Thing Two, unexpectedly appear! A favorite among kids, parents, and teachers, this story uses simple words and basic rhyme to encourage and delight beginning readers.
Beginner Books are fun, funny, and easy to read! Launched by Dr. Seuss in 1957 with the publication of The Cat in the Hat, this beloved early reader series motivates children to read on their own by using simple words with illustrations that give clues to their meaning. Featuring a combination of kid appeal, supportive vocabulary, and bright, cheerful art, Beginner Books will encourage a love of reading in children.
Buy On:
Bookshop.org UK
Bookshop.org US
Waterstones
Q. Do you prefer reading on paper, Kindle or listening to an audiobook?
Definitely prefer reading on paper – that’s what I grew up on. When traveling I reluctantly resort to my iPad, since I can carry only so many books, being committed to just carry-on luggage.
Q. Do you have a favourite bookshop (and why that shop)?
Mrs. Dalloway’s
Bookshops, especially independent bookshops, are an endangered species in the United States. Berkeley, California being a university town, we still have a few. Mrs. Dalloway’s is my favorite for its calming ambience and name. But nowhere beats London. Daunt Books in Marylebone sets the standard for its carefully staff-curated selection, not to mention for the fact that it’s in Marylebone.
Many thanks to Barry for recommending a super set of books! Please don't forget to check out Money Beyond Borders: Global Currencies from Croesus to Crypto.
Daryl
Image Copyrights: (Money Beyond Borders: Global Currencies from Croesus to Crypto), University of Chicago Press (Veeck As In Wreck: The Autobiography of Bill Veeck), The University of Chicago Press (The Means of Prediction: How AI Really Works), HarperCollins Publishers (The Cat in the Hat).
< Home
