Hidden Forces

In Episode 54 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with economic historian Barry Eichengreen about his experience studying currency pegs and exchange rate mechanisms, as the two explore how the legacy of globalization, trade liberalization, and the great moderation laid the foundation for the challenges facing the modern economy. Barry Eichengreen has made a career of studying the history of money and the role that currency has played in the international order. Currency regimes are not fixed in stone. Our current system of floating exchange rates backed by the petrodollar has only been with for the last forty years. Before it, the Western world existed on the gold exchange rate mechanism of Bretton Woods, which lasted for less than thirty years, and whose dissolution lead to a period of high inflation and unemployment that challenged the economic models of the time and put the American economy and political establishment through a decade of frustration, uncertainty, and unrest. However, In the years afte