Ann Berg

  • Origin of petro dollars

    By Ann Berg  |  September 21, 2006

    In 1973 while the United States struggled to tame inflation with wage and price controls, the Arab oil embargo sent the price of crude petroleum from $3.00 per barrel to $11.00 almost overnight,

  • Global monetary systems: then and now

    By Ann Berg  |  September 21, 2006

    World War I — the war to end all wars — changed the map of humankind forever. Battle and famine claimed 15 million lives. Empires and dynasties imploded into multiple states throughout eastern and

  • The opium wars

    By Ann Berg  |  August 16, 2006

    Unable to compel a modern-day “currency alignment” between gold and silver on China, in 1839 the British navy launched an assault against China to coerce the resumption of the India to China opium

  • Money’s sordid tale of dirty floats, debasement and doom

    By Ann Berg  |  August 16, 2006

    Marx extolled it as the numeraire. Keynes damned it as a barbarous relic. In the end, Nixon snuffed it. Yet for more than two millennia, gold was matchless among precious metals, valued in multiples

  • The curious Federal Reserve

    By Ann Berg  |  July 26, 2006

    According to the Bank of International Settlements, the Federal Reserve, created during Woodrow Wilson’s tenure in 1913, “is a curious hybrid, a privately owned, quasi-public institution whose sole

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