industries up and running, and they needed other imported equipment. So the Marshall Plan was important for getting European economies on their feet, again, restoring their capacity to export and earn dollars. More generally, I think the Marshall Plan did play a critical role in the golden age of economic growth in Europe and Japan, getting it started in the third quarter of the 20th century. Do I think the Marshall Plan was critical for solidifying the dollar's international role? Not so much. I think the dollar would have been dominant had the European economy been robust, as it was, or had it limped along in the third quarter of the 20th century, because, again, only the United States had deep and liquid markets open to the rest of the world. I think China now is in a different situation because not only are there trade flows as there were after World War II, but we live in a world of capital flows as well, until recently anyway, other countries have been investing in China. China (25/38)
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