Currency Wars, or Why You Should Care About the Global Struggle Over the Value of Money

Exchanging Turkish lira for dollars at an exchange office in Turkey

Source: Yusuf Atalan

The U.S. dollar, which has enjoyed the 'exorbitant privilege' of being the world's default currency

Source: Marco Calderon

A sign shows currency exchange rates at an office in Turkey

Source: Yusuf Atalan

China's currency, the renminbi

Source: Public Domain

The U.S. dollar, which has enjoyed the 'exorbitant privilege' of being the world's default currency

Source: Public Domain

The Euro

Source: Public Domain

Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega, who claimed that an 'international currency war' had broken out

Source: Agencia Brasil

Currency from Virginia, issued during the American Revolutionary War

Source: Public Domain

An American gold certificate from the 1920s

Source: Public Domain

An 1896 cartoon depicting William Jennings Bryan's declaration that mankind would not be 'crucified on a cross of gold'

Source: Public Domain

The book cover of Ron Paul's book advocating an end to the U.S. Federal Reserve

Source: Hachette Book Group

World Bank President Robert Zoellick, who recently sparked controversy by seeming to call for a modified gold standard

Source: IMF

The Mount Washington Hotel, where the Bretton Woods agreement establishing a “new international monetary order” based on the U.S. dollar was signed in 1944

Source: Sven Klippel

Leaders at the G20 Summit in Seoul, where the United States unsuccessfully sought to pressure China on the the value of its currency (November 2010)

Source: Presidencia de la Nacion Argentina

Leaders at the G20 Summit in Seoul, where the United States unsuccessfully sought to pressure China on the the value of its currency (November 2010)

Source: Presidencia de la Nacion Argentina

A poster for the 1896 Bryan-Sewall U.S. presidential campaign advocating silver and gold for the country's currency

Source: Public Domain

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn (left) and U.S. Secretary of Treasury Tim Geithner at a 2009 G7 meeting

Source: IMF

The Federal Reserve, Washington, D.C.

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Dan Smith

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke

Source: Public Domain

The symbol for Europe's shared currency, the Euro, in front of the European Central Bank, Frankfurt, Germany

Source: Public Domain

A 2010 violent protest against austerity measures in Greece, which has been unable re-inflate its economy by devaluing its currency as a member of the euro zone

Source: http://underclassrising.net/