Book Details
Paperback: 320 pages
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1602392706
ISBN-13: 978-1602392700
Product Dimensions: 1.3 x 6.5 x 9.1 inches
Book Description
The world’s quietest weapon of mass destruction is 75 percent cotton, 25 percent linen, and 100 percent fake.
The amount of counterfeit money in circulation is unknown, but hundreds of millions of bogus U.S. dollars are seized each year. Mass counterfeiting is not just organized crime, it can also be aggressive economic warfare waged by states to destabilize enemy governments, and it is reaching epidemic proportions. Forgery provides cash for states like North Korea and Iran in their pursuit of weapons-a fact publicly unacknowledged, even as fears grow over their nuclear ambitions.
In Currency Wars, John Cooley maps this dirty matrix of war and politics, sabotage and subterfuge, with new evidence and recently disclosed documents. With sound grounding in current affairs and history alike, Cooley demonstrates that the machinations of today’s states echo attempts in antiquity by Persia, Greece, Rome, and China to use and defend against forgery and currency debasement. Counterfeiting remained a high crime throughout medieval and Renaissance Europe; played a key role in the American and French Revolutions; and was used by the British, Germans, and Soviets in two World Wars. Bad money mixed with post-war dictatorships, and was a tool of the KGB, CIA, Stasi, Hezbollah, the Medellín cartels, and the Chinese Triads.
About the Authors
John Cooley
John Kent Cooley (November 25, 1927 – August 6, 2008) was an American journalist and author who specialized in terrorism and the Middle East. Based in Athens, he worked as a radio and off-air television correspondent for ABC News and was a long-time contributing editor to the Christian Science Monitor.
Cooley was one of only a handful of Western journalists widely regarded and trusted in the Middle East as an expert on the area’s history and politics. He interviewed several of the region’s heads of state and was personally acquainted with the senior leadership of the PLO. His many awards include the Council on Foreign Relations’ Fellowship for American Foreign Correspondents,[1] and the coveted George Polk Award for distinguished career achievement in international reporting. He was a key part of the ABC News Prime Time Live team that won an Emmy in 1990 for its investigation into the December 21, 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
