"Alexander Hamilton called it the ancient dollar it was already an established uh uh unit of measure it was already an established currency well before the United States" - Brendan Greeley [00:06:55]
"monetary sovereignty is very difficult to achieve and constantly under attack hard one and hard to hold on to" - Brendan Greeley [00:07:40]
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"every bit as foreign as Liverpool and Paris right you had So we didn't have a currency union you know there's this idea that money was chaotic at the time" - Brendan Greeley [00:18:54]
"the dollar doesn't float in by magic as a social convention it sits on all of this regulation on the FDI on the controller on on on the call reports" - Brendan Greeley [00:25:32]
"the idea that a lord found silver and created those money and that money of his own realm became valuable somewhere else just doesn't hold water what you actually have is silver is capitalism" - Brendan Greeley [00:33:29]
"you know international currencies are not domestic currencies that go on world tour they have different qualities" - Brendan Greeley [00:40:24]
"we're taking something that is I'm sorry a bank and we're saying no you're a special bank" - Brendan Greeley [01:03:26]
Speakers & Credentials
David Beckworth: Host of the Macro Musings podcast, conducting deep-dive interviews into macroeconomic themes.
Brendan Greeley: Veteran financial journalist (Financial Times, Bloomberg, The Economist), PhD student in history at Princeton University, and author of The Almighty Dollar: 500 Years of the World's Most Powerful Money.
1. Executive Summary
Brendan Greeley challenges the conventional macroeconomic narrative that the US dollar derived its power primarily from American geopolitical hegemony, instead proving it was a deeply established global commercial currency 250 years before the US was founded.
The briefing debunks the "1776 problem," demonstrating that the foundational American economy deliberately adopted copies of a Spanish silver coin with a Bohemian lineage, purely for its commercial reliability in clearing Atlantic and Pacific trade.
Greeley systematically traces the mechanical evolution of the dollar from 16th-century physical silver capitalism, to 19th-century heavily fragmented local bank notes, and ultimately to the endogenous creation of deposit dollars out of private credit operations.
The analysis underscores that modern dollar dominance—including the massive $14 Trillion offshore Eurodollar market—was never centrally planned; it was an organic, market-driven phenomenon born from London bankers creatively repurposing American deposits post-WWII.
The historical framework developed in the book serves as a powerful predictive model for modern stablecoins, framing them not as novel technologies but as historical echoes of unregulated "wildcat" banking that will inevitably require state bailouts and regulatory absorption.
The "1776 Problem" and the Ancient Dollar [00:06:36]
From Fragmented Bank Notes to a National Currency Union [00:10:47]
Civil War Finance and the True Impact of the National Bank Charter [00:19:55]
The 16th Century Bohemian Capitalist Origins of the Dollar [00:27:08]
Spain as the "Swing Producer" of the Dollar Standard [00:34:15]
The Shift to Deposit Dollars and Monetarism [00:41:05]
The Unplanned Ascension of the Eurodollar Market [00:48:06]
Stablecoins: A Return to the 19th Century Regulatory State [01:00:44]
3. Detailed Thematic Summary
The Pivot to Financial History & Fed Mechanics [00:00:00]
Brendan Greeley realized during the intense COVID-19 era of Fed interventions that standard economic frameworks were insufficient for writing a history of the dollar [00:01:27].
To avoid isolated "cherry-picking" of historical facts, he enrolled in a PhD program at Princeton to ground his theories in a rigorous, academic historical tradition [00:02:22].
His time as a specialized Fed journalist offered him a profound advantage: understanding that the Fed structurally functions as a bank, which is vital for analyzing historical monetary mechanics [00:06:10].
The "1776 Problem" and the Myth of Monetary Sovereignty [00:06:36]
The history of the dollar suffers from a "1776 problem"—the flawed assumption that a newly sovereign nation automatically mints a newly sovereign currency [00:07:07].
The US deliberately chose the name of an existing Spanish coin with a German derivation rather than inventing a new unit [00:07:19].
Alexander Hamilton famously referred to it as the "ancient dollar," acknowledging it was an established global unit of measure long before the US existed [00:06:55].
The Spanish dollar’s global footprint is deeply embedded in foreign languages: the Malaysian ringgit refers to the milled edges of the Spanish dollar [00:08:46], and the Chinese yuan and Japanese yen both mean "round," referring to the massive silver coins arriving via Manila galleons [00:08:58].
Even William Shakespeare was referencing "dollars" in the early 17th century at the Globe Theater, well aware that they represented large silver coins imported from the low countries for English wool [00:09:35].
The Painful Domestic Transition & Absence of a Currency Union [00:10:47]
Early Americans heavily relied on "promises on paper" and ledger transactions due to a severe lack of physical silver, essentially conducting local clearing similar to modern bank deposits [00:11:34].
Despite the eventual adoption of the dollar, psychological path dependency was strong; early citizens maintained their accounting in British shillings and pence, referring to the dollar merely as "federal money" [00:11:15].
The US Constitution outlawed state-issued bills of credit, resulting in an explosion of state-chartered banks issuing their own fragmented notes (growing from 2 banks in 1789 to several hundred by 1837) [00:13:20].
Crucially, the pre-Civil War US lacked a unified currency. In cities like New Orleans, bills of exchange listed Boston, New York, and Philadelphia as being just as "foreign" as Liverpool and Paris [00:18:54].
Civil War Architecture: The True Birth of the Bank Dollar [00:19:55]
While historical focus is usually on fiat "Greenbacks," Treasury Secretary Samuel Chase’s National Bank Charter was infinitely more foundational [00:21:50].
Chase successfully destroyed decentralized state currencies by imposing a punitive 10% tax on state bank notes [00:21:55].
Under the new charter, national banks were granted the authority to print money, but only if it was backed 100% by US Treasuries, linking private banking inextricably to sovereign debt [00:22:28].
The system evolved not through "magic" or "social convention," but via a brutal 50-year cycle of Crisis and Response, leading to rigorous bank reporting, the creation of the FDIC (1932), and the establishment of the Fed to manage an elastic currency [00:25:20].
Bohemian Origins: The Triumph of Capitalism Over Empire [00:27:08]
Rejecting economist Robert Mundell's theory that great currencies are "children of empires," Greeley proves the dollar was born of decentralized, illegal capitalism [00:27:16].
In 16th-century Joachimsthal (Bohemia), Count Stefan Schlick and Saxon investors secretly initiated a massive, highly capital-intensive silver mining operation, circumventing Holy Roman Empire laws [00:28:16].
Because producing smaller petty coins was unprofitable, the mint exclusively produced massive silver dividend coins known as Joachimsthalers (which held the purchasing power of 27 pounds of bacon) [00:30:57].
These giant coins were useless for retail but perfect for clearing wholesale Baltic trade, prompting immediate imitation across Europe. The name was eventually truncated by the Dutch to "dollar" [00:31:34].
Spain as the "Swing Producer" of the Dollar Standard [00:34:15]
Operating like a swing barrel producer of oil, Spain captured the global standard by driving down the marginal cost of silver extraction in the New World [00:34:15].
Leveraging German mining expertise and brutal forced labor (the mita system) in Potosi (Bolivia), Spain flooded the global market with cheap silver [00:36:45].
In a critical numismatic accident, Spain realized their domestic 8-real coin ("Piece of Eight") possessed nearly the exact same weight as the Bohemian thaler, so they merely copied the thaler standard to tap into global mercantile demand [00:36:08].
The Exponential Rise of Deposit Money & The Eurodollar [00:41:05]
Relying on Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s data, Greeley shows how physical cash restrictions forced banks to shift their primary money creation to digital deposit ledgers between 1860 and 1930 [00:43:40].
After WWII, European exporters held massive dollar claims inside American banks. Instead of exchanging them for gold, London banks secretly bought access to these claims and traded them, sparking the Eurodollar market [00:50:02].
To the shock of the BIS and economists like Friedman, offshore banks began endogenously marking up their balance sheets to create brand-new Eurodollars entirely outside the purview of the Fed or the US Treasury [00:52:13].
Today, there are an estimated $14 Trillion in Eurodollars compared to $19 Trillion in US domestic M1, proving the dollar's true strength lies in unregulated, organic global utility [01:02:03].
Stablecoins: A Dangerous Echo of Wildcat Banking [01:00:44]
Stablecoins are not a fundamentally new asset, but rather entities attempting to operate as banks while legally evading the structural regulations designed to protect them (a return to 19th-century banking) [01:03:26].
With light-touch state regulations (e.g., the legislation Greeley refers to), the offshore stablecoin ecosystem is being primed for a catastrophic blowout [01:02:44].
Ultimately, when an offshore stablecoin crisis hits, citizens holding what they believe to be "dollars" will demand to be made whole, forcing the US Congress and the Federal Reserve to backstop and effectively integrate stablecoins into the traditional dollar system [01:03:59].
The Reference Vault
4. Data & Figures
Data Point
Value
Context
Timestamp
Book's Historical Timeline
500 Years
The extended timeframe Greeley covers to demonstrate the true lineage of the dollar, dwarfing US history.
The "1776 Problem" of Sovereignty: A framework designed to shatter the illusion that money requires an empire or nation-state to exist. The United States did not invent a currency; it merely adopted a vastly successful, pre-existing commercial unit of measure because of its global utility. [00:07:07]
The Swing Producer Model of Currency: Greeley equates 16th-century Spain's control of silver to modern Saudi Arabia's control of oil. By drastically reducing the marginal cost of producing silver at Potosi, Spain captured the global standard, making it the dominant monetary force. [00:34:15]
Endogenous Money Creation (Private Acts of Credit): A framework countering the idea that money flows top-down from central banks. Money is created endogenously when commercial banks issue credit by marking up their balance sheets. Physical coins simply sit on the edge of these ledgers as a final clearing mechanism. [00:43:00]
Crisis & Response Architecture: The stability of modern money is not due to a shared "social convention" but is the direct, mechanical output of over 100 years of financial panics followed by targeted government regulations (FDIC, call reports, the Fed) designed to prevent private credit from blowing up. [00:25:20]
"The Money Problem" (Morgan Ricks): A historical cycle wherein every time the state successfully regulates and locks down a form of money, the private market inevitably invents a new, unregulated form of money (like Eurodollars or Stablecoins) to evade those restrictions. [00:57:44]
6. Anecdotes
The Fake Hunting Party: In the 16th century, Count Stefan Schlick and his Saxon investor syndicate had to disguise themselves as a casual hunting party just to cross the border into Bohemia undetected so they could illegally prospect and mine silver. [00:29:26]
The Hoover Date Night: Herbert Hoover and his wife Lou, long before his presidency, spent their romantic evenings in London meticulously translating "De Re Metallica"—a massive 16th-century Latin mining manual originating directly from the Joachimsthal silver mines—into English. [00:34:58]
The "Dog Dollar" of the Colonies: Colonial Americans engaged in diverse trade, widely accepting a Dutch silver coin that featured a recumbent lion. Because the coin became so worn down by aggressive circulation, Americans joked the lion looked like a begging dog, earning it the moniker "dog dollar". [00:38:41]
London's Secret Eurodollars: In the 1950s, journalist Paul Einzig began discovering that London bankers were buying and trading foreign access to American domestic deposits. When he confronted the bankers, they frantically begged him not to tell anyone, terrified that regulators would instantly destroy their highly lucrative, entirely unauthorized market. [00:51:28]
7. References & Recommendations
People
Alexander Hamilton: First Secretary of Treasury who openly referred to the dollar as the "ancient dollar," acknowledging its long history prior to US founding. [00:06:55]
Stefan Schlick: A Bohemian count and capitalist who illegally initiated the silver mining operations that created the very first thaler (dollar). [00:28:16]
Milton Friedman & Anna Schwartz: Pioneering economists cited for meticulously tracking the pivotal macro shift from physical note cash to digital deposit money in the late 19th/early 20th century. [00:41:05]
Robert Mundell: Nobel Prize-winning economist whose theory that great currencies strictly require a geopolitical empire is directly challenged by the organic rise of the Bohemian dollar. [00:27:16]
A. Mitchell Innes: Early 20th-century British official who correctly theorized that money originates almost entirely from underlying acts of private credit, rather than from commodities or sovereign states. [00:55:20]
Carl Menger: Austrian economist brought up by Beckworth to highlight that money naturally forms around the most "saleable" or useful asset driven by network effects, though Greeley notes Menger incorrectly anchored this strictly to gold. [00:54:21]
Barry Eichengreen: Renowned economist referenced for asserting that successful currencies historically required the backing of a large standing army (which Greeley refutes regarding the dollar). [00:27:30]
Morgan Ricks: Scholar cited for coining "The Money Problem," which illustrates the regulatory game of whack-a-mole against new forms of private money creation. [00:57:44]
Peter Conti-Brown: Financial historian cited for asserting that our banking system is not perfectly designed but rather forged entirely through trial, error, and panics. [00:25:54]
Books & Texts
A Monetary History of the United States: The definitive text by Friedman and Schwartz that provides the irreplaceable data outlining how national bank regulations accidentally catalyzed the checking deposit economy. [00:41:11]
De Re Metallica: The foundational 16th-century Latin mining manual written at Joachimsthal that was later translated into English by the Hoovers. [00:34:58]
Geopolitical Entities, Locations & Institutions
Joachimsthal (Bohemia): The specific European valley where the first highly-capitalized silver mining operations commenced, yielding the foundational "Joachimsthaler" dividend coin. [00:30:15]
Potosi (Bolivia): The site of brutal Spanish colonial silver extraction using the mita system, which effectively cratered the global price of silver and secured Spanish dominance. [00:36:45]
Bank for International Settlements (BIS): The international financial institution that authored a secret memo in the 1970s confirming offshore banks in London were actively creating brand new Eurodollars. [00:52:35]
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC): Created in 1932 as a critical component of the "crisis and response" architecture required to stop decentralized bank deposits from violently collapsing. [00:25:02]
8. The Bottomline (by AI)
The global dominance of the US dollar is not a product of 20th-century geopolitical design or American sovereignty, but rather the evolutionary result of 500 years of unregulated commercial credit and decentralized market forces. As the dollar’s physical origins gave way to ledgers and offshore Eurodollars, its history demonstrates that financial innovation consistently outpaces state regulation. For contemporary policymakers and investors, this means the current offshore stablecoin ecosystem is not a technological aberration, but merely the latest iteration of shadow banking that will inevitably face a major crisis, require a massive federal bailout, and paradoxically entrench the structural footprint of the "ancient dollar" even further into the global economy.
Jul 15, 2026
Last Lecture Series: “How to Win Without Crushing Your Soul” - Graham Weaver | 15 Jul 2026
"Trying to find internal validation through external achievement is like drinking salt water to quench your thirst. It seems like it's going to work, but it just makes you thirstier." Graham Weaver 00:07:20 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e…
US Post-WWII Gold Reserves
60-70%
The staggering percentage of global gold stored in Fort Knox following the second world war.