Thinking about the dollar, crypto, fiat currency, MMT? Get some perspective on the purpose of currency, managing money supply, inflation, wage pressures and all the currently popular financial issues……from a review of how Soviet bureaucrats grappled with similar challenges in the 1950s. Yes, Soviet bureaucrats. Seem remote? Of course, on one obvious level it is. On many other levels, however, the challenges were quite similar. Professor Kristy Ironside from McGill University joins me on the show to discuss her just published Full Value Ruble: The Promise of Prosperity in the Postwar Soviet Union (Harvard University Press, 2021).