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Informationen zum Autor Saleha Mohsin Klappentext "The untold story of how one of America's most invincible institutions-the Treasury-has used the U.S. dollar to define America's role in the world, and our economic future"-- Leseprobe 1. Surviving Donald Trump It was January 24, 2018, and the seventy-seventh United States secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, was in the bucolic resort town of Davos, Switzerland. Hundreds of the alpine city's residents had fled to make room for an exclusive group of self-described thought leaders gathered for the World Economic Forum's annual conference. This year, for a weeklong winter camp dedicated to big problems, lavish parties, and cigar bars, the security bill topped $9 million. In attendance was an incongruous collection of people: 53 heads of state, 116 billionaires, and, for some reason, Elton John. But before Steven Mnuchin could even begin to hobnob with the global elite gathered, the Treasury chief made a faux paus that put the dollar on an immediate weakening streak and momentarily brought the world to the precipice of a full-blown currency war for the first time in more than three decades. All because of just seven words: "A weaker dollar is good for us." While there was more to the statement that Mnuchin made to reporters shortly after breakfast, this was the only part that the world's economic policymakers, business leaders, and investors cared about. To the untrained ear, it was a dull phrase. But for Mnuchin's constituents in economics and finance, it was scary: secretaries aren't supposed to yearn for a weak value for the dollar. To world leaders like Angela Merkel, the battle-tested German chancellor at the time, Mnuchin had just obliterated a rule that took decades to hone: world leaders do not talk about their currencies. Such chatter amounts to verbal intervention, or "jawboning" in policy parlance, which is intended to hint at a government plan that includes a preferred value for its currency. It suggests that the government is willing to use its own cash to jump into foreign exchange markets, to influence the forces of supply and demand on currency values by buying or selling dollars. As a mark of sophistication and commitment to fair economic integration, in recent decades the world's most influential nations, the Group of Twenty, had refrained from such activities, a pledge enshrined in dozens of joint statements and agreements. Mnuchin now appeared willing to defy that. It would quickly emerge that the Treasury chief had no intention of signaling anything new in U.S. currency policy. But to investors, the comment was a green light to sell the dollar-which is what they did that day, pushing down its value by 2.1 percent to reach the lowest level in three years. The remarks fueled an existing trend of depreciation due in part to an optimistic outlook for European economies, but also to uncertainty about where the United States was headed now that President Donald Trump was installing an increasingly protectionist economic agenda. Mnuchin's seven words on the dollar also threw into question the value of investors' stake in precious American government bonds, called Treasuries. A weak currency erodes the value of trillions of dollars in U.S. debt held by foreign countries, banks, and individuals. For failing to speak about the dollar without absolute care and caution, Mnuchin faced a barrage of criticism. Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, said that his seven words amounted to an opening salvo of a currency war. Merkel called the nationalistic policies that Mnuchin's words represented "poison," and another European official, unwilling to be named making such a comment, called the incident an example of "buffoonery." You could say that Mnuchin had succumbed to a common malady among Treasury secretaries. The dollar must be spoken about with the u...
