Our Dollar, Your Problem: An Insider's View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead

“There’s a clear throughline about how U.S. monetary and fiscal choices shape the global system, and how that system, in turn, constrains the United States. The explicit narrative is a warning. Rogoff argues that the era in which the dollar enjoyed unquestioned dominance alongside broad global stability may be fading, and that erosion could bring more frequent or severe crises—sovereign debt problems, inflationary episodes, and financial instability. But running alongside that is a quieter, almost contradictory story. The world has learned. Countries have more flexible exchange rates, larger reserves, less foreign-currency borrowing, and stronger monetary institutions than they did a generation ago. We also have new tools, like central bank swap lines, that didn’t exist in earlier crises. The fact that shocks like COVID did not trigger the kind of cascading emerging-market crises we saw in the 1980s or 1990s is not an accident. It reflects institutional learning. The book is most interesting where these two stories collide.” Read more...

The Best Economics Books of 2025

Jason Furman, Economist