A child’s curiosity and natural desire to learn are like a tiny flame, easily extinguished unless it’s protected and given fuel. This book will help you as a parent both protect that flame of curiosity and supply it with the fuel necessary to make it burn bright throughout your child’s life. Let’s ignite our children’s natural love of learning!
October 29th, 2007
Our Dollar
Our dollar has been in trouble for a while. Things are not getting better (which means, yes, they are getting worse).
The following are some links containing information regarding our dollar that I’ve recently come across.
- Interview with international investor Jim Rogers on the dollar
- Central Bank of Iran has moved away entirely from the dollar
- IMF chief warns dollar may suffer ‘abrupt fall’
- Dollar Hits Now Low Against Euro
- IMF says dollar ‘overvalued’
- Japan and China lead flight from the dollar
- Vicente Fox Admits Plan for New North American Currency
- Weak dollar prompts record foreign buyouts of U.S. companies
- Paper Money and Tyranny, by Ron Paul
- Chinese Officials Threaten To Pull the Plug on the U.S. Dollar
- Kuwait forced to end link with dollar
- Doomsday for the Greenback
- Inflation Calculator (shows that our dollar is worth four cents of the original 1913 Federal Reserve Note)
- Chris posted some good links on the economy/dollar here.
- Read more about the dollar or the economy.
Here’s a graph showing the dollar index in the past couple of years:
Up until a few months ago, the dollar had never fallen below 80 on the index chart. Now it’s hovering around 77/78, for the first time ever. This comes after Bernanke and his pals at the Federal Reserve have continued Alan Greenspan’s process of printing money to satisfy the whims of government and economic officials wanting to save face and avoid paying the piper for bad policies.
Here’s a graph showing the Consumer Price Index (which shows the inflation of the dollar:
From wikipedia, here’s the value of the dollar since the birth of the nation:
Needless to say, why anybody would continue to invest in dollars is beyond me.
15 Responses to “Our Dollar”
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November 13, 2007
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Ah capitalism.
It seems the “communist” nations of the world are doing much better than the “free” nations, eh? Those darn socialists in Europe! How dare they have a better, more sound currency! We’re supposed to be da best.
Ah capitalism.
This has little to do with capitalism. This has everything to do with the government’s intrusion of economic policy, and the establishment of a central bank to print dollars not tied to any specie, giving Uncle Sam free license to spend whatever it wishes.
How is that capitalism?
It seems the “communist” nations of the world are doing much better than the “free” nations, eh?
Far from it. Sure, a communist nation creates a populace of sweatshop workers and oppressed laborers, which then generate cheap products that rake in dollars. Does that make them “better”? Does that mean their economy is more sound, or their nation superior to our own?
BTW, gold is doing very nicely. A 15% ROI in two short months… Beat that, dollar-based investments!
Ah I forget. Excuse me. I keep forgetting that capitalism is a near-perfect system, and that it has no serious downsides. Silly me for thinking realistically.
Actually, from my limited understand of the market. Now would be the best time to invest in the dollar. Buy low, sell high.
Also, Just want to give a head nod to your comments about capitalism, government intrusion, and the economy.
Regarding you comments about gold. Gold is doing so well, because it is so closely tied to the dollar. As the dollar goes down, gold goes up. Investing in gold is actually an investment against the U.S. Dollar.
Now before I post this, I have to say, that my understanding of this is very limited and I may very well, be wrong, but this is my understanding of the whole thing.
Now would be the best time to invest in the dollar. Buy low, sell high.
That would require the dollar ever going up in the future. Based on inflation rates and historical trends, that’s very unlikely to occur.
Gold is doing so well, because it is so closely tied to the dollar. As the dollar goes down, gold goes up. Investing in gold is actually an investment against the U.S. Dollar.
Exactly. Spot on. Gold is doing so well mostly because the dollar is doing so poorly.
Dan, you have finally made some comments that made me smile. I agree with you, in a way. Capitalism is showing its drawbacks. Our form of capitalism is actually a form of extreme capitalism, which has evolved into fascism to a large degree. The type of fascism I am referring to is corporate control of government.
But, realistically, much of the dollar’s weakness has to do with our military overspending. Last I heard it was costing us 10 billion $ per WEEK just to stay in Iraq. China is financing our war on Iraq.
Right now is a good time to be investing in some gold & silver. It’s an excellent store of value. I’ve got some in my safe here at home.
Now is also a good time to start using the Liberty dollar.
It’s REAL money, unlike the Federal Reserve Note which is nothing, but fiat trash.
Inflation-proof currency? Dude, there ain’t no such thing.
Dude,
I suspect you don’t even know what inflation is.
The CAUSE, that is. . . 🙂
I’ve watched the exchange rate between the US$ and the Euro since before the Euro was introduced. I went to Germany in the first week of October 2001. This was less than one month AFTER September 11th. (The planes were about empty!) My US$ bought me 1.15 Euros back then.
Actually, the Euro then was in an introductory phase. Europeans still used their cash like the Deutsche Mark, the Franc, etc. But, if they used a credit card, or some other type of cashless transaction, it was reckoned in Euros. It was pretty cool to see all the goods in the stores with two prices displayed – – one price in the local cash amount, and the second price in Euros. This made shopping in Europe easy to do for an American. Since the dollar bought 1.15 Euros, it seemed that I could look at the price of the item in Euros, and in my mind equate that to US dollars pretty easily.
I returned to Germany in July of 2004. My US$ was then only buying .85 Euro. This was a loss of my purchasing power of approximately 30% since my previous trip in 2001.
I returned to Germany last month (September 2007) and my US$ now only bought .73 Euros.
But, since early September when my rate was .73, the Euro now (October 29) sits at .69.
A rough estimate of the amount of drop in the value of the US$ against the Euro since 9/11/2001 is appoximately 45%.
This might lead one to believe that the dollar is doing poorly, and the Euro is doing great. But, all the Germans I talked to in 2004 and 2007 complained how weak their Euro is!
Indeed, the Euro is also weakening in value. But, what is happening is that the Euro is dropping, but NOT NEARLY AS QUICKLY as our US$ is dropping.
So, I stated that my dollar has weakened approximately 45% in the last 6 years against the Euro, but the Euro has also weakened during those 6 years. This means that the actual drop in value of the US$ is greater than 45%!
Connor, thanks for all those links.
I think it’s time we all sit down and re-read Revelation chapter 18.
From What You Should Know About Inflation:
“When modern governments inflate by increasing the paper-money supply, directly or indirectly, they do in principle what kings once did when they clipped coins. Diluting the money supply with paper is the moral equivalent of diluting the milk supply with water. Notwithstanding all the pious pretenses of governments that inflation is some evil visitation from without, inflation is practically always the result of deliberate governmental policy.”