Anyway, read up on this a bit more and share with us what you find out. Above all, ask yourself, as a foreigner, why would you quote your trades in USD or even accept it?
Things have value at a given point in time based on both their immediate utility and their longer term prospects. Look at stocks in 2000. I agree that some of the european countries are very stable, in fact in my prior post I was going to point out that Switzerland IMO largely has a valued currency because of it's stability which is partly because it remains neutral rather than adventuring abroad with its army. So rather a counterexample to the USA.
The problem is that economic growth is also part of long term stability. The USA, for all of its faults, is still seen as an engine of growth. Europe rather less so, and Japan as well.
I've lived in foreign countries, enjoy visiting them, and would like to purchase property in the tropics somewhere, and intend to retire there. But this causes me to look at stability, and law and order & property rights more careful than many do. The USA looks pretty good from that POV. The places I'd love to live like Central & South America, or worse, parts of West Central Africa are downright scary from a property ownership POV.
I'm much less concerned about oil long term. We can solve that problem. The main missing ingredient has been that energy prices were too low to allow market type solutions. For all his muddled messing about, Bush has gotten us where we need to be on that front, though he surely did not desire it, and is too dense to take credit for it. God bless him! :) |
