The US dollar’s ‘immigrant’ origins

**Brendan Greeley** (0:00)
By the early 17th century, the word dollar shows up in Shakespeare twice. This wasn't just for merchants. So as commerce spreads to the American colonies, the dollar also becomes a standard accepted unit of value and coin in the United States as well, or rather in the colonies. But then they choose for their currency a Spanish coin made from Mexican silver with a German name.

**Gillian Tett** (0:25)
Well, that shows the joys of multiculturalism. And immigrants, they get the job done.

**Brendan Greeley** (0:30)
It's an immigrant coin. This is not the story of sovereignty.

**Gillian Tett** (0:33)
So when is someone going to tell the American government that they're using an immigrant coin?

**Robin Wigglesworth** (0:45)
Today on The Story of Money, the Origins of the Dollar.

**Gillian Tett** (0:51)
Ugh, that's a topic which is super timely today because I've been seeing central bank governors and finance ministers recently, and what many of them are wondering is, can the dominance of the dollar remain in place?
And is there anything which could possibly topple it? And of course, to answer those questions about why the dollar is so dominant, it actually pays to look not just to the future but also to the past and to understand exactly how and where the dollar came from in the first place because people don't often ask that question, do they Robin?

**Robin Wigglesworth** (1:28)
No, that's right. It may surprise some people to learn that the door itself is actually a lot older than the United States of America.

**Gillian Tett** (1:36)
But the original inventor has been almost completely written out of the history books, and that's partly because he was something of an inept character. He wasn't a great hero. He was a bit of a loser, as you might say, in time.
When he created the dollar, he had no idea what was going to happen to it.

**Robin Wigglesworth** (1:55)
I've actually prepared a little thing here. I'm going to make it. It's a bit of an experiment.

**Gillian Tett** (2:00)
This is you getting creative in a way that you're never allowed to do before when we're working together.

**Robin Wigglesworth** (2:04)
Exactly.

**Gillian Tett** (2:05)
This is it.

**Robin Wigglesworth** (2:06)
This is finally breaking free. Yes, my revenge. I'm going to do a bit of a fairy tale rendering.
Here goes. Once upon a time in a land far, far away, a land in Central Europe called Bohemia. It was a place full of mountains and valleys and untouched forests and almost magical waters. It was a period of lords and counts and kings. In one of these valleys lay a vast fortune, hidden just beneath the surface, a valley full of silver. See, this mine had actually been hidden for ages and ages until one day, a nobleman, the hero of our story, if you will, hears about this fabled silver mine and decides to make his fortune.
Now, doesn't that sound like a fairy tale start?

**Gillian Tett** (2:57)
It takes us to the point that the dollar actually started not in any printing press or central bank, but actually in a silver mine.

**Robin Wigglesworth** (3:05)
Yeah, so we're going to be going back 500 years actually now, to the beginning of the 16th century. We're going to the silver mine in Central Europe and we're meeting this guy who played a key role in the creation of the coin that was the forefather of the dollar, the OG dollar, the granddaddy dollar, in other words. So welcome to The Story of Money from the Financial Times, everybody.

**Gillian Tett** (3:27)
I'm Gillian Tett.

**Robin Wigglesworth** (3:28)
And I'm Robin Wigglesworth. So, the dollar has existed in various incarnations for almost half a millennium. But Gillian, as you mentioned, perhaps the dollar is reaching the end of the road, or maybe it's past its peak perhaps, maybe?

**Gillian Tett** (3:49)
Well, what has certainly peaked is discussion about whether the dollar regime that's dominated the global economy and financial system for the last few decades might indeed be starting to fracture a bit as rivals like China start to challenge it, and of course cryptocurrencies provide a potential alternative. But if we're going to start talking about the dollar and the future of the dollar, we have to go back first and look at how the dollar actually first came to life, and to help us tell that extraordinary story, which most people never talk about at all, we have Brendan Greeley. Now, Brendan, a long time ago, was one of my colleagues at the FT in New York, but he's the author of a new book on the world's most powerful currency called The Almighty Dollar. So, Brendan, great to have you back.