Crisis Begets Opportunity

Written: October 6, 2008

The vote to solve the current financial crisis further devalues the US Dollar making inflation worse.  All products and services, priced in Dollars will cost more.  That’s not all bad.  Think about it.

Until the corner grocer and the owner of your gas station fully recognize how many more Dollars they’ll have to pay their suppliers and employees, you’ll get bargains for a while using the cheaper Dollars that the government presses spit out.

Also, temporally, foreign customers can get more high-tech products per Dollar, including Boeing and Gulfstream jet planes, until labor unions wake up and demand more of the cheap Dollars per hour.

Our children and grandchildren will pay back our huge National Debt to our Bondholders in China and around the world with cheaper Dollars. That’s good for us but bad for the Bondholders.  That sounds great until we realize that those Bondholders include us! The Dollars in our Mutual Funds and retirement checks will buy less than the Dollars we paid in.

Investors who buy US Bonds expect to be paid back, with interest, in Dollars worth as much as the ones that they invested.  When we devalue our Dollar, they stop buying.

The US Dollar has been highly respected over the years because we’ve always paid our debts and because we’ve had the most productive economy in the world.  This has permitted us to continue to spend more than we can afford, run deficits each year and let the National Debt balloon.  We borrow and spend these funds that people have invested in our country to feed our ‘Buy now - Pay later” habits.

In this way we’ve created this depression.

Our Dollar is not backed up by gold at Fort Knox.  We no longer have any semblance of a monetary standard.  Neither does the Euro, the English Pound nor other currencies widely in use on earth today.  These currencies are free-market traded and exchanged at their perceived relative value every day.

There are advantages to the country or group of countries that create a currency based on nothing more than the perceived worth of the creator and its ability to return more value in the future for the value invested.

If our government continues to print Dollars and pass them out to Main Street in a continuing effort to satisfy the unlimited self-interest, greed, of the populous to get votes our depression will continue.

It has been said that hidden in every problem is an opportunity.  I believe that this crisis could lead us to an improvement in how we trade with each other around the world.  We could establish a common international currency accepted worldwide.

No, it doesn’t need to force us into a common world government.  As our experience with the United Nations Organization shows, most countries prefer to maintain their individuality.

However, as improved communication and transportation shrinks our planet we have already gravitated to a common international language, English, which airline pilots from different countries now use as they fly us where ever we want to go.  (Click on: English for Aviation Safety

Why not specify a specific currency, either a new or an existing one, i.e. the US Dollar, for use on the Internet?  This could be done simply by the administrators of the Internet.  Since all currencies are traded freely based on the perceived value of the buyers and sellers, the creators of each currency would be free to attempt to fix the value of their currency against the common currency but its market value would be determined by the currency traders.  This will make it easy for anyone to compare the value of product or service offerings in terms of an international currency.

Unfortunately, without a major change in Washington, Wall Street and Main Street away from “Spend for Today” to “Save for Tomorrow” inflation will continue and we may need $10,000 to buy a cheap pair of shoes.

Whatever happens, our American can-do, Yankee & Rebel grit and Pioneer spirit will assure that the USA will pull (muddle?) through.  We, as citizens, can learn from this experience the way we, as individuals, are learning about the burden of credit card debt.