The Dollar Conundrum: Poison or Cure?

Either the dollar is defended with high interest rates or it will collapse under the tsunami of debt/money expansion. If it collapses then the cost of imports will skyrocket. Either way, the credit-addicted U.S. economy will implode.


The choice just ahead is stark: either passively watch the dollar collapse as the tsunami of money expansion and Federal borrowing slams it or start defending it with much higher interest rates. Either way, the credit-dependent U.S. economy will be unable to borrow freely at low cost from the rest of the world.

The blogosphere is chockful of reports documenting our trading partners' not-so-subtle stampede to the dollar exit--is there any mystery here? None whatsoever. Even a so-called reserve currency like the dollar responds to supply and demand: as the Fed pushes money expansion up by 100% (you've seen the hockey-stick charts by now) and the U.S. Treasury borrows trillions of dollars to fund a widening deficit and various trillion-dollar bailouts of failed and/or fraud-filled/looted industries, then this burgeoning supply overwhelms demand, pushing down the value.

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