Barry Eichengreen, Paul Blustein, and Brendan Greeley on Dollar Dominance

Barry Eichengreen is a is well known author, economist, and economic historian from the University of California, Berkeley. Paul Blustein is a former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal journalist who has authored several acclaimed books on global economic institutions. Brendan Greeley is a veteran journalist from the Financial Times and current PhD student at Princeton studying monetary history. They all return to the show for a special roundtable discussion where they discuss the history of dominant currencies, whether we will always end up with a single reserve currency, whether monetary sovereignty is earned or given, the question of exorbitant privilege, what there is to do about a second China Shock, the future of dollars in the digital age, and much more.

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Check out the transcript for this week's episode, now with links.

Recorded on May 11th, 2026

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Timestamps

00:00:00 - Intro

00:02:01 - On Each Author's Book

00:11:12 - Globally Dominant Currencies

00:25:37 - Single Reserve Currency

00:28:34 - Fed's Control Over Global Dollar System

00:38:39 - Exorbitant Privilege

00:46:30 - China Shock 2.0

00:49:23 - Future of the Global Dollar System

00:58:16 - Outro