● Money Beyond Borders: Global Currencies from Croesus to Crypto
Barry Eichengreen
Review via Financial Times
The US dollar’s recent travails — it has fallen more than 10 per cent against other major currencies since the beginning of 2025 — have led to renewed questioning about its future. How long will it remain the world’s premier currency? What might it take to finally knock it off its perch? And, should it fall, what will replace it — a new dominant reserve currency, a basket of quasi-reserve currencies, perhaps even something from the cryptoverse? …
Eichengreen’s suspicion is that, if and when the US dollar in turn loses its mantle, the wounds will more likely be self-inflicted than exacted by a monetary foe. Among the possible fatal harms, he identifies heightened tariffs, America’s escalating fiscal woes, the undermining of Federal Reserve independence, more aggressive and widespread use of financial sanctions and a retreat from longstanding international alliances. The current US president has leaned — sometimes more than leaned — in all these directions.
Steady Today, Uncertain Tomorrow: Iran War Tests US Resilience
The war in Iran is sending shockwaves across the globe, but the US economy has managed to stay remarkably steady so far. How long the relative calm lasts is unclear, and will likely be determined by the duration of the conflict.
Powell’s Pause: A Gamble Wrapped in Uncertainty
The Federal Reserve has a deep pool of resources for analyzing the economy to support its mission to adjust monetary policy to match current and expected macro conditions. But sometimes a central bank’s vaunted research machine offers insights no sharper than whatever you’d get from chatting with a guy waiting at the bus stop. The present moment is one of those times, thanks to the uncertainty surrounding the ongoing war in Iraq.
Commodities Surge, Everything Else Sinks as Iran War Drags On
The pain isn’t equally distributed. It never is, as the fallout from the war in Iran makes clear. Since the attack began on Feb. 28, nearly every major asset class—aside from commodities and cash—has slipped into the red, with losses spreading broadly across global markets through yesterday’s close (Mar. 17).
Prolonged Iran Conflict Starting To Raise Specter of Stagflation
Estimating the timeline for the end game for the war in Iran remains a slippery task. Gaming out the costs, by contrast, is relatively straightforward. Each day the war continues, the outlook turns a bit murkier, and the risk ticks higher for economic harm.
US Q1 GDP Expected To Rebound As Energy Shock Lurks For Q2
Economic output for the first quarter is expected to partially recover from the stall‑speed pace of Q4, but the threat of an energy shock is looming as the war in Iran continues.
Book Bits: 14 March 2026
● The Alibi of Capital: How We Broke the Earth to Steal the Future on the Promise of a Better Tomorrow
Timothy Mitchell
Review via Publishers Weekly
Political theorist Mitchell (Carbon Democracy) offers a paradigm-shifting critique of the logic that underlies the modern economy. Today is “an age in which extraordinary wealth seems to arrive from unfathomable sources,” Mitchell writes, noting that even critics of the current system seem unable to reckon with the vast and concentrated wealth “conjured… out of thin air” by speculative financial markets. To fully reckon with this “mode of acquiring unearned wealth” that is “the defining feature of our contemporary form of life,” Mitchell argues that one must understand what capital actually is. Capital, he asserts, is foremost “a practical means of consuming the future.”
US 10‑Year Treasury Yield Near ‘Fair Value’ at Outset of Iran War
The 10-year Treasury yield was close to its “fair value” estimate in February, based on the average of three models. Before the start of the war in Iran on Feb. 28, the fading market premium in recent months was expected to continue, and perhaps slide to a discount in the near future. The outlook has been upended due to the ongoing military conflict, which is sending shock waves through the world economy.
Commodities Lead Major Asset Classes By Wide Margin This Year
The war in Iran has roiled the outlook for financial markets and the global economy, but commodities are clearly benefiting from the turmoil as prices rise for energy and other raw materials.
The War May End Soon, But the Fed’s Battle Is Only Beginning
Before the attack started on Feb. 28, lingering concerns about inflation had kept the Fed wary of extending last year’s interest rate cuts. Although several measures of pricing pressure had stabilized at lower levels relative to recent history, Fed officials expressed caution about declaring victory in fully taming the price spike that peaked at 9.0% year over year for the Consumer Price Index in June 2022.