But it DID allow the politicos to appeal to the public's fears and patriotism to the Fatherland to take control. Hmmmm.....
In Hitler's Germany they would use gold to back the currency. The gold came from loot from other countries. I don't consider it a valid comparison what happened anytime back then and now. If you lived back in time when WWI and II were occuring there would be only vague comparisons. Almost everything was done behind closed doors especially in Hitler's Germany and you would not be able to protest decisions it's was on the shoulders of those who were appointed. Keep in mind that Hitler's rise to power was after the 1929 depression and there was 30% unemployement after. {January 30th, 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany.} There was near full employment in 1930's Deutschland but real wages dropped. But just because a currency is "weak" doen't mean that economic policy can't be strick for strong exports like what China has done to become a dominant economic force.
Many talk about "devaluing", thats vastly different to actual currency fluctuation. There not offering a two for one deal, after all, this isnt a stock split. To gnome, its easy enough to say you want to keep things at a very high parity, except the rest of the world has dealt with significant fluctuations, for some time-and its all to do with the us assuming, and maintaining superpower status, rather than actually being a truly efficient economy. A big economy, but not an efficient one-the vertical integration of us corps takes advantage of overseas leverage, , corporate ownership of raw material assets, lower manufacturing costs, and sheer bargaining power, little more-the us has paid lip service to actual capitalism, or free trade, it has to come back at some point. That is not to suggest, i dont share your concerns, nor that many other countries tied implicitly to the us, wouldn't be hoping for a good outcome in the terms described.
That's the load of crapola the Gummint wants us all to believe... that it's some sort of "intricate, involved, convoluted, complex thingy regarding international concerns and whatnot"... when it's really about the Gummint and Fed printing money to overspend its tax revenues which gets balanced on the backs of its citizens and foreign debt holders through inflation and currency devaluation.
Im not going to disagree on that, just pointing out im not in the us, and our currency, for better or worse, was "floated" at the economic equivalent of gunpoint by the us government-they wanted shitloads of yellowcake, at better cost, they got it. Modern economies exist through sheer exploitation, its a plain old fact, the $AU was "worth" about 46 us cents not a decade ago-worth a lot more now, innit? But complaining that nothing, anywhere, is gold backed, or that a bunch of imbeciles may be running the joint into the ground, thats par for the course, globally, it seems the us just hasn't had a reality check for a while .
I don't think the US is that much different than any other industialized nation. Almost all use fractional reserve banking and fed bank monetary policy. It does balance out if the countries work together to an extent. The global economy is the big issue. The US can never expect to have it easy when there are no major raw resouces like New Zealand, Australia and Canada have. Much of what we can export has to be manufactured because there is no excess product. Sadly we have to deal with South America, Africa, and the Middle Eastern hell holes if we want raw resouces. Now there talking about lifting the peg so even crude won't be priced in usd anymore.
NY Times has a falling-dollar-is-good article out today: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/02/business/02view.html Makes good points, the best of which is that the positive GDP contribution of increased exports is offsetting the negative GDP of the real estate decline.
I was going to post this story too since so many people think the sky is falling. Here is a graph that accompanied the article. We're far from a huge decline... yet