Author: Barry J. Eichengreen

  • The Cash Nexus: Money and Power In The Modern World 1700-2000

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    How do countries become powerful? Aong these lines, how do they end up dictating the flow and pattern of history? Niall Ferguson, latching on to historian Thomas Carlye’s concept of the “cash nexus,” argued that the determinants fell into four distinct areas: a tax collecting bureaucracy; national debt; parliamentary democracy;…

  • The Hall of Mirrors

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    The Great Depression lasted from 1929-1933 by most accounts. The trigger is usually deemed to have been the introduction of the Smoot-Hawley Act, where 22,000 items flowing into the United States were to be widely taxed; creating a global repercussion and meltdown on an unprecedented scale. The actual story, according…