Currencies - Topics

Why the Swiss franc and the yen behave like safe havens What full convertibility means and why so few currencies have it Why does money run to the dollar and Treasuries exactly when the US looks weakest? Why does gold act like a currency in a crisis and a metal the rest of the time? How emerging market central banks defend a currency without owning the reserves to do it Why the airport kiosk rate is so much worse than the interbank rate Anatomy of a currency crisis: what happens in the first 72 hours How did the 1997 Asian currency crisis jump from Thailand to Korea in months? When to convert money before a trip and when to wait Bretton Woods fixed the dollar to gold and everyone else to the dollar The dollar still dominates reserves even as its share keeps slipping Maria Theresa thalers were still minted in 2000 for trade in East Africa The Spanish dollar was the world's reserve currency before the pound Why emerging market currencies fall faster than their economies do Sterling's long retreat from reserve currency status How a currency earns reserve status in the first place The euro's design flaw: one currency with no shared treasury How a currency peg holds together and how it snaps One euro exchange rate hurts German exporters and Greek importers differently Countries import inflation through energy and export it through a weaker currency Countries that run on another nation's currency give up control of their money supply Why the Japanese yen became the world's funding currency What devaluation does to a country that imports nearly everything