David McWilliams

Now, what we want to talk about today, we're going to talk to Brendan Greeley, a monetary historian, a brilliant, brilliant thinker who's just written a beautiful book about the dollar called The Almighty Dollar.

Now, it is a real tour de force.

It gets quite

technical parts, but it's got brilliant stories with brilliant characters with wonderful episodes from economic history.

But what it's trying to do, it's trying to synthesize the story of money in a way that is comprehensible.

So where does it come from?

How does it start?

Is money sovereign?

Is it part of the state or is it something else?

And again, you know, is it credit?

Is it finance?

Is it trust?

Is it reputation?

What about crypto?

Does that offer anything new to the world or is it basically only a reinvention of old stuff?

And is our understanding about money simply our understanding of loads and loads of innovation in human behavior over hundreds of years, which has led us to this financial architecture, which we know to be central banking and bank regulation and all that sort of malarkey, John.

It is fascinating stuff.

Why don't we go straight away to Brendan?

Yeah.

Let's get into the meat and drink of this thing, and then you and I can come back and have a chat.