GST, some news for you:
Dollar's Fall Has Little Impact in U.S.
"Greenspan said inflation "appears quiescent" despite the dollar's continued slide. Import prices rose just 0.2% in December."
online.wsj.com
Dollar's woes proving bizarre bonanza for US debt
Wednesday January 14, 10:42 am ET
By Wayne Cole
NEW YORK, Jan 14 (Reuters) - The dollar's decline is proving, somewhat bizarrely, to be a boon for Treasuries as central bank intervention funds find a home in the bosom of U.S. debt markets.
On Thursday the Federal Reserve is expected to report that its holdings of U.S. Treasury and agency debt for foreign central banks hit a record high this week.
biz.yahoo.com
and
U.S. Nov trade gap narrows unexpectedly to $38 bln
Wednesday January 14, 9:05 am ET
WASHINGTON, Jan 14 (Reuters) - The U.S. trade deficit narrowed unexpectedly in November to $38.0 billion, as civilian aircraft sales pushed exports to their highest level in three years, the U.S. Commerce Department said on Wednesday.
The monthly trade gap was the smallest since October 2002 and well below the mid-point estimate of $42.0 billion from analysts surveyed before the report. Exports rose 2.9 percent to $90.6 billion, while imports retreated slightly to $128.6 billion from October's record high.
biz.yahoo.com
Oh, and you might find this edifying (more likely, you'll whine and chant "bobonomics fairyland, bobonomics fairyland", but I thought I'd try to help you pull your head out of your arse):
'Another fallacy seldom contradicted is that exports are good, imports bad. The truth is very different. We cannot eat, wear, or enjoy the goods we send abroad. We eat bananas from Central America, wear Italian shoes, drive German automobiles, and enjoy programs we see on our Japanese TV sets. Our gain from foreign trade is what we import. Exports are the price we pay to get imports. As Adam Smith saw so clearly, the citizens of a nation benefit from getting as large a volume of imports as possible in return for its exports or, equivalently, from exporting as little as possible to pay for its imports.
'The misleading terminology we use reflects these erroneous ideas. "Protection" really means exploiting the consumer. A "favorable balance of trade" really means exporting more than we import, sending abroad goods of greater total value than the goods we get from abroad. In your private household, you would surely prefer to pay less for more rather than the other way around, yet that would be termed an "unfavorable balance of payments" in foreign trade.'
-The Case for Free Trade, Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman, Hoover Digest, 1997:4.
www-hoover.stanford.edu |
