. Rcanfiel: This entire post is extremely naive. The US announces a different coin, and you spin a whole alternate world "what-if" reality. Whatever. ********* November 21, 2007 SouthAmerica: The United States currency lost most of its value since it became the reserve currency of choice of central bankers around the world after the end of WW II. Today that 1946 US$ 1 dollar bill is worth less than 10 cents. I am surprised that the international financial community have not started talking about and suggesting to the United States for the US to create the New US dollar. A rate of conversion of 10 to 1 would be a very reasonable thing to do right now. The US government total annual expenses would become only N$ 300 billion dollars. US defense spending would become only N$ 60 billion dollars. The US government cumulative debt would be only N$ 1 trillion dollars. All the write offs from massive losses from the sub-prime mess would look more palatable to the world. Most people's credit card debt would not look as bad when cut by a factor of ten. Other countries from around the world used that strategy in the past when the value of their currency was over inflated. .
. Reply to Rcanfield I don't understand why people from around the world has the perception that the US dollar represents a store of value today. The US government did a good job in marketing the US dollar as a store of value then they milked their product to the last drop and most people still thinking today that they are holding something of great value. Even Hollywood could not do a better job in selling that type of illusion. Years from now when we look back people will put the spotlight on the central bankers and the financial wizards that kept the rollover game going until the house of cards collapsed. .
The U.S. is a great country. We have rodeos, country music, hillbillies, pick-up trucks, Nascar, and Budweiser beer.
. November 23, 2007 SouthAmerica: Reply to Vinny1 You forgot to list what the United States it does better than anybody else - Hollywood. .
. November 26, 2007 SouthAmerica: The end of the US dollar era is here. Now that the world started waking up to the real intrinsic value of the US dollar - the game is over. And we should have a new international monetary arrangement in the coming years with multiple major currencies. Considering what is going on today and also what is coming on the near future then how far in the future is the exchange rate of US$ 2.00 = Euro $ 1.00? I would not be surprised if the US dollar continued its decline to that level - the US dollar it will become like a snow ball coming down a mountain. ****** Dollarâs last lap as the only anchor currency By Wolfgang Munchau The Financial Times - UK Published: November 25 2007 It has been one of the most influential theories about exchange rates in the age of globalisation and it may be about to go up in smoke. In 2003, the economists Michael Dooley, David Folkerts-Landau and Peter Garber* proposed what has since been known as the Bretton Woods II theory. The idea is based on the observation that newly industrialised countries peg their currencies to the dollar at an undervalued exchange rate in pursuit of export-led growth. In return, they reinvest their loot back into the US, which acts as an anchor and consumer of last resort. In 2006, the US ran a current account deficit of more than 6 per cent of gross domestic product, a level that would normally be considered excessive. The Bretton Woods II theory says that this state of affairs is both desirable and sustainable. To say that not everybody agrees with this theory would be an understatement. It now appears that no matter whether you find this state of affairs desirable or not, it probably is not sustainable. One piece of statistical evidence â though certainly not conclusive â is the latest data on global flows of funds. The financial flows back into the US appear to have come to a sudden stop this summer. The US Treasury International Capital System (TIC) data show a massive drop in net foreign purchases of US long-term securities since the end of June. To get an idea of the magnitudes involved: foreign net purchases of long-term US securities â the difference between foreign purchases of US securities and US purchases of foreign securities â had been running at an average of about $70bn a month in 2005, and a little higher in 2006. The monthly net inflow in June this year was still a strong $99.9bn but that figure dropped to plus $19.5bn in July, minus $70.6bn in August and back to plus $26.4bn in September. If you take the 2005 and 2006 data as roughly what you need to sustain the US current account deficit at 2006 levels â give or take a few billion dollars â this sudden decline looks very much like a big structural shift. As the US capital account surplus is falling, then so, logically, must be its current account deficit. However, that suggests that the Bretton Woods II system is no longer working the way it is supposed to work. In some respects, Bretton Woods II appears like a giant money laundering cartel. You buy my goods and, in return, I give you the money back in the form of a loan. It is, perhaps, no surprise that it took a credit market crash to bring that macroeconomic scam to an end. What will come next? Global currency regimes tend to come and go in long cycles, with fixed-rate and floating-rate regimes following each other with a surprising degree of regularity. The end of Bretton Woods I was followed by a period of floating exchange rates. Europe started a long process towards monetary union, via an exchange-rate mechanism, which resulted in a single and free floating currency 30 years later. So what will follow Bretton Woods II? I can think of two scenarios. The first is that the dollarâs global monopoly will give way to a duopoly of the dollar and the euro. It is impossible to predict the timing of any such shift. Over time, as countries replace a dollar peg with a mixed basket peg, they are likely to readjust reserve portfolios as well. An important reason why they want to change the dollar peg is the threat of imported inflation, which has become a problem in China and the six countries of the Gulf Co-Operation Council (GCC) after the dollarâs devaluation. There have been a number of signals recently that the dollar peg is about to be dropped, for example, in the United Arab Emirates. Of course, if that were to happen, the dollar would almost certainly fall further and this might induce others to drop their pegs as well. It is not difficult to imagine a situation in which Bretton Woods II could unravel in a disorderly fashion. Another, at least theoretical possibility is the emergence of regional exchange rate regimes, along the lines of what happened in Europe after Bretton Woods I. There has been a lot of talk for a long time about Asian monetary union, with little progress so far. Either way, we are probably in the last long lap of the dollar as the worldâs only anchor currency. We do not yet fully comprehend the new era, but it is fair to say that it is probably not going to be Bretton Woods III. *See for example, An Essay on the revised Bretton Woods System, Nber working paper 9971, www.nber.org. Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/96754c52-9b7c-11dc-8aad-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1 .
. November 16, 2010 SouthAmerica: Here is Ben Bernanke's desperate move. The New United States Currency - "The New US dollar". Today there are so many US dollars flying around the world that might be a good idea for the United States government to replace its current US dollar with the âNew US Dollarâ â and the new exchange rate would be: each current $ 100 US dollar would be exchanged to $ 1 New US dollar. â Just like they usually do in 3rd world countries when their currency starts becoming worthless. The exchange rate of $100 âOld dollarsâ to $1 âNew Dollarâ would be just about right. .
Yes, Brazil is a wonderful and unique place... They even give clowns (literally) the chance to be politicians... Clown elected to Brazil Congress takes literacy test 2010-11-13 11:00:00 Hottest Brazilian SinglesAds by GoogleAre Waiting For You. 100s Profiles. Find your Girlfriend in Brazil! AmoLatina.com Sao Paulo, Nov 13 (IANS/EFE) Brazilian clown Tiririca who was elected to Brazil's lower house of Congress has taken a literacy test to prove that he can read and write. He won the legislative elections in October with over 1.3 million votes. He took the test Thursday -- a requirement for serving as a lawmaker -- before the electoral court authorities. Tiririca was examined by the Regional Electoral Court of Sao Paulo state so he could have the chance to prove that he is competent to hold the public office. Court president Walter de Almeida Guilherme declared that Tiririca took the test but it still 'cannot be confirmed that he knows how to read and write' as the final verdict will be delivered by Judge Aloizio Silveira, the official charged with evaluating the exam. Millions of people in Brazil are classified as functionally illiterate, who can read and write but often without understanding what they actually mean. During the exam, Tiririca had to read aloud the headlines and subheadings of the articles written on the first two pages of a Brazilian daily and write a brief dictation from a passage of the book entitled 'Justicia Electoral. Una retrospectiva' (Electoral justice: A retrospective). Francisco Everardo Oliveira Silva, 45, is a television personality known by the nickname of Tiririca, and in last month's legislative elections he ran for a federal congressional seat for the Party of the Republic and received the most votes of any candidate for a similar post nationwide. However, his lower house seat became endangered when he was accused of not knowing how to read or write. Brazilian electoral law prevents illiterate people from holding public office.
You sound like you are desperate because 20-30% of Brazil's people can't read even in this day and age. Good thing you came to the USA over 40 years ago or you would be illiterate also don't you think?
I saw in another thread where someone exposed SouthAmerica as a elderly immigrant living quite modestly in the USA on social security. He has not actually been to Brazil in *decades*. All the pontificating and cut & paste bufoonery is a fraud. SA cannot even make a living in Brazil and has no investment there. The fantasies about being a magazine contributor are just that, fantasies. That "magazine" has a handful of subscribers. Here in America SA is afforded some opportunity, some security, some safety and some freedom to speak his mind. Too bad he has no appreciation for those things. What kind of life would SA realistically have in Brazil?