American democracy prides itself on being “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” But the people lack control ...

Over history, the world has adopted the currency of the leading country for global payments. The USD is, arguably, the first global currency untethered from precious metals. For millennia, gold and, ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. James Broughel is an economist focused on the economics of regulation. With the recent passage of the GENIUS Act, the United ...

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) unveiled a new vision for the future of the global monetary and financial system, centered on a tokenized unified ledger. This innovative framework aims to ...

Every day, people around the world trade their time, effort, and energy to earn money. But what is money? Money is an item that acts as a unit of account, medium of exchange, and store of value by ...

“I’m going to Saudi Arabia. I made a deal with Saudi Arabia. I’d usually go to the U.K. first. Last time I went to Saudi Arabia they put up $450 billion. I said well, this time they’ve gotten richer, ...

This book review appeared in the Winter 1997/98 issue of The Independent Review. A major theme of Barry Eichengreen’s accessible history of the international monetary system since 1850 is that pegged ...

Monetary dynamics in banking and financial systems encompass the processes by which money is created, circulated and managed within economies. Commercial banks create most broad money through lending, ...