Preface to the Korean edition

Prologue: Why the Dollar Is Strong

The Beginning of Everything: The New York Clearinghouse | The World's Most Powerful Plumbing | The International Role of the Dollar | Complementarity and Universality | Credit as the Proprietor of a Shared Fiction | Kublai Khan's Cross | The Role of the US Government | The Many Forms of the Dollar | A Post-Dollar World? | The Power and Responsibility of the United States | "Reports of My Death Are Greatly Exaggerated"

Chapter 1: The Emperor's Path

Landscape of the Free Banking Era│The Civil War and the Birth of the Greenback│The ​​Dollar Nailed to a Gold Cross│“The Money Is Not Here”│The Ultimate Lender Steps Up│Morgan’s Study│The Roaring Twenties│Keynes’s Scholarship and White’s Obstinacy│The Birth of the Bretton Woods System│The Triffin Dilemma│Excessive Privilege and France’s Rebellion│The Soaring Gold Price│“What a Tragedy for Humanity!”│The Dollar After the Bretton Woods System

Chapter 2: Protecting the Throne in Crisis

Oil Shock, Dollar Shock│Liquidity, the Core of Dollar Hegemony│Treasury Traders Riding Limos│The Trinity of Oil, Dollar, and Treasury Bonds│Inflation is Coming│Inflation Fighter Volcker│“Why We Must Take Action”│One Step Back and Two Steps Forward│The Dollar’s ​​Strength, a Double-Edged Sword│The Plaza Accord and Orderly Revaluation│The Problem of China│Elements of a Crisis│Why Does Dollar Demand Increase in Times of Crisis│The Global Financial Crisis and the Fed’s Intervention│“Helping Them Is in Our Interest, Too”│The Dollar After the Crisis

Chapter 3: A Currency War Breaks Out

Europe Dreams of Integration│Praise for the Euro│Scenarios for the Eurozone Collapse│The Scars of the European Financial Crisis│Cutting Off the Pig's Tail│The Uproar and Shabby Ending of the Yen│The Birth of Paper Gold│The SDR That Never Became Manna│China's Financial Reform and Market Opening│From Greenback to Redback?│Eat the Yuan That Dead Mao Zedong Bought│"Excessive Privileges Are No Longer Excessive"

Chapter 4 Weaponizing the Dollar

America's New Way of Prosecuting War│European Countries' Grits│Is a Currency War Beginning│A Chokepoint in International Trade│A Weapon That Wasn't Made as a Weapon│The Truth and Lies of Economic Sanctions│The More You Push, the More They Bounce Back│Spears and Shields│The War on Drug Cartels Ends in an Ambiguous Way│The War on Terrorist Funds Begins│Uninvited Guests from America│The World's Most Powerful Treasury Department

Chapter 5: Taxation will also be imposed on the moon

A Brief History of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis│The Power of the Patriot Act That Surprised Even the United States│Between Coercion and Emphasis│Iran, the Giant Enemy│Finally Kneel│Russian Fortress Defense│China's Counterattack│"A Typical Difficult Target"│The Long Road to Weaponizing the Dollar

Chapter 6: Digital Competitors

"What if no one uses it?" │ From the Internet of Information to the Internet of Value │ The Chain of Bank Accounts │ Bitcoin Breaks the Chain │ How Bitcoin Works │ High Ideals and the Not-So-Realities │ Stablecoins Awaken Cryptowinter │ Mark Zuckerberg Summoned to Hearing │ From Private to Public │ The Potential of CBDCs

Chapter 7: The Pros and Cons of CBDCs and Stablecoins

Even beggars beg with QR codes in China│The Chinese Communist Party clipped Alibaba's wings│CBDC ignored even in China│Digitalized dollars and digital dollars│Fed Chairman Powell's creed│The shadow cast over CBDC: Is it the shadow of the government?│Totalitarian charges draped over CBDC│$1 per stablecoin│The vanguard of the dollar│The reality of stablecoins: money laundering│The reality of stablecoins: defegging│Can CBDCs be a fundamental alternative│CBDC's sidekick, tokenized deposits│A world where everything is digital│Ta-da? Whoa!

Chapter 8: The Roaring Dollar

Powell vs. Trump | Treasury Markets Reeling from the Pandemic | Endless Falls | The Fed Steps in Again | "A Damn Close Call" | Too Much Money, Too Little Goods | Hitting the Brakes | The King Dollar's Reign | The Emerging Markets Crisis

Chapter 9: Strength and Caution

"Exit Russia from SWIFT" | Anti-Russian financial carpet bombing | The big bear never dies | Countless detours | The sinking shadow fleet | The anti-dollar axis | You can un-use it, but you can't replace it.

Epilogue: With great power comes great responsibility.

The nonsense that the dollar is dead│Lessons from "Spider-Man"│The future of mass sanctions│The contradictions of cryptocurrency│"It's obvious they're trying to buy favor"│Spit out the orange pill│Healthy competition is needed│Hegemony that doesn't guarantee privileges│The challenge of fiscal deficits│Dollar hegemony in the post-dollar era

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“No one can escape the dollar!”
The world that dollar hegemony has changed and will change

Today, the dollar accounts for 60 percent of the world's foreign exchange reserves, 60 percent of international loans and deposits, 70 percent of international bonds and other debt securities, 90 percent of foreign exchange transactions, including swaps, and more than 90 percent of international trade.
In short, the world economy is integrated by the dollar, and therefore no one can escape from it.
In Korea alone, 90 percent of export payments are billed in dollars, and this very "universality" is the dollar's unique strength as a reserve currency.
So when and how did the dollar become so widely used?

Paul Bluestein, a world-renowned economic journalist and financial nonfiction writer known for his digital forensics-like narratives, finds the answer in his latest work, "King Dollar," which traces the dollar's journey over the past 100 years.
Just as knowing the seed allows us to infer the fruit, if we trace the process of forming the dollar hegemony from the beginning, its future will naturally be revealed.

· “The more crisis there is, the stronger we become!”
From CHIPS to the Fed, the pillars of dollar hegemony

The book unravels the history of the dollar's hegemony as a process of building overwhelming "liquidity."
Liquidity provides two advantages: first, anyone can buy or sell dollar-denominated assets at any time and as much as they want, and second, the price does not fluctuate significantly even when numerous transactions occur.
Thanks to this, dollar-denominated assets are traded at fair prices even during financial crises.
In short, the dollar is the last and best hedge.

Where did the dollar play a crucial role in providing this liquidity? While government agencies like the Federal Reserve, the US central bank, or the Treasury Department might naturally come to mind, the book focuses on a private organization operating behind the scenes.
This is the Clearing Interbank Payments System (CHIPS). CHIPS mediates dollar transactions between financial institutions, including banks. Everything from routine credit card payments to large-scale remittances between multinational corporations is processed here.
With over 90 percent of international transactions denominated in dollars today passing through it, CHIPS can be seen as both the beginning and the end of dollar hegemony.

No matter how well the plumbing is installed, it is useless if the water runs dry.
For the same reason, the book identifies the 'petrodollar' as another axis of dollar hegemony.
In the mid-1970s, when the world economy was reeling from the impact of the oil crisis, the United States successfully negotiated a deal with Saudi Arabia, guaranteeing permanent regime security in exchange for oil being traded only in dollars.
Because oil is a key component of modern industry and the economy, this trade forced more countries to spend more dollars, thus beginning the golden age of the dollar.

As the last bastion of dollar hegemony, the Federal Reserve cannot be left out.
Traditionally, the Fed has been the institution that fights inflation and protects the value of the dollar, but the global financial crisis of 2007-2008 forced it to take on a different role.
At the time, the Federal Reserve took on the role of "lender of last resort" and provided liquidity as large financial firms on Wall Street collapsed and major banks around the world faltered.
This proved that even in the financial crisis that originated in the United States, the dollar served as a lifeline.
This provides a crucial clue to the direction of dollar hegemony.


· “Why Do Enemies of the Dollar Fail?”
Fatal flaws in the yuan, euro, and yen

The dollar is the only currency that possesses all three of these essential elements: a global pipeline (CHIPS), a perpetually flowing water (petrodollars), and a staunch regulator (the Federal Reserve).
In this regard, the book criticizes the dollar's competitors for having "many flaws."

What weaknesses does the Japanese yen, once considered the second-largest economic power after the United States, possess? Japan used to tightly control the cross-border movement of the yen, allowing it to provide low-interest loans to domestic companies.
As a result, numerous companies, from Toyota to Sony, have succeeded in expanding overseas, but the yen's role in international transactions has diminished.
Meanwhile, the euro, the symbol of European integration, was almost the trigger for Europe's division, and its status was damaged.
The introduction of the euro made it easier for peripheral countries to borrow more money from core countries, which led to the European debt crisis of 2010.
If even one of the eurozone member states' fiscal health deteriorates again, the same crisis could recur.

Today, the yuan, which claims to be the leader of 'de-dollarization,' is being held back by China's own strong power.
This is because the strengthened authoritarianism since Xi Jinping took power has led to the weakening of the rule of law.
In 2015, 14 years after China joined the WTO, the People's Court of China (China's Supreme Court) declared that it must "resolutely resist ideas such as judicial independence and separation of powers."
Who would want to invest in the yuan or yuan-denominated assets under this legal system, where it is “hard to believe” that property rights will be protected?

· “Will cryptocurrencies become a dark horse in the international monetary system?”
Bitcoin, Stablecoins, and CBDCs Await Their Destiny

Many people expect cryptocurrencies to overturn the international monetary system, but wouldn't they be able to replace the dollar? However, that's still a long way off.
First of all, Bitcoin, the representative cryptocurrency, has an inherent limitation in that its issuance amount is limited.
It is common economic sense that if the amount of currency issued does not increase elastically in line with economic growth, deflation will occur.

So what about the stablecoins that have recently been attracting attention? Most stablecoins currently in circulation are designed to maintain a value of "1 stablecoin = 1 dollar" by using dollar-denominated assets as a kind of reserve.
The problem is that when this structure is questioned, the value of the stablecoin plummets, known as "defegging," and this happens too frequently.
Even for USDT and USDC alone, which currently dominate the stablecoin market, defegging occurred more than 700 times in 2022 and more than 600 times in the first nine months of 2023.
So why is the US government so eager to legalize stablecoins, even introducing the "Genius Act"? Simply put, it's to create new demand for US Treasury bonds, a prime dollar-denominated asset.
In other words, as stablecoins are absorbed into the institutional system and demand increases, stablecoin issuers will have to purchase more U.S. Treasury bonds.
Since this process itself strengthens the dollar's liquidity, stablecoins are simply another means of maintaining dollar hegemony.

So what if the Fed were to issue a "digital dollar"? A central bank-issued digital currency like this is called a CBDC, and China's digital yuan, e-CNY, is a prime example.
However, CBDCs are rarely used in any country.
This is because most payments and transfers are already processed online via smartphones and computers.
The same goes for the dollar.
Is there really a need for a digital dollar when there is a digitized dollar?

· “With great power comes great responsibility.”
The Achilles' Heel of the Dollar Hegemony and America's Choice

The book, which analyzes why leading currencies and the latest digital currencies fail to beat the dollar, concludes with a concerned look at recent US actions.
If the dollar hegemony has an Achilles' heel, what is it?

In the mid-1990s, the United States gave the Treasury Department extensive powers to combat money laundering by drug cartels.
The idea was that banks that transacted with countries or organizations designated as enemies by the United States would be prohibited from using dollars, regardless of nationality.
Then, many banks took it upon themselves to stop doing business with drug cartels.
The same measures were later used against "rogue states" North Korea and Iran, achieving the desired results.
This “weaponization of the dollar” was further strengthened by the USA Patriot Act, which was enacted in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and recently succeeded in freezing $300 billion in Russia’s foreign exchange reserves in return for invading Ukraine.

But is the dollar's growing strength truly good for it? The dollar is both legal tender for the United States and an international currency.
Therefore, if the United States continues to manipulate the dollar as it pleases, it will inevitably lose international trust.
For the same reason, the renewed clash between Trump and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is also threatening the dollar's reputation.
If the US president dictates to the Federal Reserve, which has already established itself as the global lender of last resort after surviving the global financial crisis and pandemic, who can trust the dollar? Fortunately, Powell set a positive precedent during the first Trump administration.
At the time, he did not yield to Trump's strong pressure and simply followed the Fed's keynote to overcome the pandemic.
The Fed isn't always perfect, but simply demonstrating that it isn't swayed by political power gives market participants a lot of confidence.
This is a lesson that must be remembered today, as Trump and Powell face off once again.


Regardless of short-term challenges like exchange rate fluctuations or the emergence of digital currencies, there is no alternative that threatens the dollar in the long term.
Therefore, denying the dollar's hegemony is "unrealistic." This has significant implications for South Korea, which has an export-driven economy.
If you're curious about how the dollar's hegemony has affected us and the world, and how it will affect us, open this book, which compiles the behind-the-scenes details of what's happening.
You will be able to see at a glance the past, present, and future of the dollar-centered monetary order.