Comments

I highly recommend reading, "The Tao of Money", which discusses our Nationality Irrationality, as I like to call it. Unless we overcome our unnecessary FEARS, and release our Egoic need to be "the Greatest Nation on Earth" (what does that mean anyway? what will it mean, and cost, our future generations?), we will continue to trade prosperity for "defense".

Posted by Joe Wilkinson at March 15, 2005 12:46 PM

It certainly isn't Alan Greenspan that anybody in their right mind really listens to these days ...

The shrinking dollar and trade deficit are another story - the long term effects make the USA a buyers market perhaps.

Posted by John at March 15, 2005 12:51 PM

Another, mostly unnoticed, impact is that of businesses in the US that have to purchase components from outside. For instance, a transplant manufacturer--part of a global group of companies that supply each other--has to purchase components from Japan. As there continue to be fewer yen to the dollar, the price of Japanese goods (the components) goes up, but the price of the finished product in the US does not (it usually goes down every year). So, the US product looks good compared to the foreign product because of the currency "pricing" impact, but it doesn't look so good to the producer of that product who had to buy from overseas anyway. This situation is becoming more and more common now that so much of the economy is international, if not truly global. So maybe the answer lies in the idea behind the euro--a global currency. If globalization is really going to be a fact of 21st century life, it will have to happen.

Posted by Mike at March 15, 2005 12:59 PM

I believe, the deficits are the real economic problem that the president, karl rove and greenspan should be focusing on. Social security is a problem eventually, but more reality TV...in comparison.
Europe would love oil priced in euros. the presidents tax policy, massive deficits, the iraq war just might be moving us closer to that outcome.

given our thirst for oil, this is a "real" homeland security issue, and as yet, seems not important enough to gather any attention from congress or the president.

it's like your mechanic saying "u' know in 100k miles this engine will need rebuilding, i better get started right away"... meanwhile he ignores the fact that your engine is currently out of oil, and he just completed the oil change.
pun intended.

Posted by kurt at March 15, 2005 4:30 PM

Thanks for the reading suggestion, Tom. This was an illuminating, if sobering article, which eludicated my concern about the deflation of the dollar in the global market. If Bush hadn't sqandered our national surplus and turned it into our nation's largest ever deficit, and weren't bankrupting us with outlandish military spending, I belive that the dollar would be in a much different place (even if American consumerism continued at its current rate). But alas, a Bush presidency (and all of its consequences) is what we have to work with. Hopefully, we'll all educate ourselves about these larger macroeconomic issues at play, tighten our belts, and do what we can to bring solvency, sobreity, and compassion back into our national economic vocabulary.

Posted by Shalom at March 15, 2005 6:17 PM