The inevitable collapse of the dollar

It's strange... economists keep saying Canada's economy has shown "extraordinary resilience" in light of the US economy tanking. We pay down our debt every year, unemployment is at a low and our housing market hasn't crashed.

The only thing Canada has really lost is manufacturing jobs, due to Americans not buying anything.
 
The value of the dollar is not a local basketball team score.

I Repeat, THE VALUE OF THE DOLLAR IS NOT A LOCAL BASKETBALL TEAM SCORE.

China has been growing their economy at 10%+ every year. How? By artificially keeping the value of their dollar LOW.

The US has been buying too much foreign shit. The natural reaction of the market is that the US dollar loses value because no one buys American.

Once the US dollar is low, big companies stop making massive profits from doing jack-shit. Instead, the actual companies that are useful to making a country powerful, aka manufacturing companies, actually start PRODUCING THINGS (god forbid!).

The US having a low dollar is not a bad thing. The value of ANY countries Dollar is ONLY relevant with respect to how people spend their money.

Useless companies will go under. Commodities and manufacturing will soar. American productivity will go up.

The dollar "collapsing" merely signifies that the current American model of selling shit is wrong. In a free market this will rectify itself as "old money CEO's" die out and young entrepenuers make a fuckload by filling the gaps.

Want to travel? How about seeing some of your own goddamn country for once, instead of flying to paris for a weekend of boutique shopping. Problem solved.

As an Australian, I look forward to having something in my house that has a "made in the US" label instead everything being labelled "made in Taiwan".
 
Jagonath said:
The value of the dollar is not a local basketball team score.

I Repeat, THE VALUE OF THE DOLLAR IS NOT A LOCAL BASKETBALL TEAM SCORE.

China has been growing their economy at 10%+ every year. How? By artificially keeping the value of their dollar LOW.

The US has been buying too much foreign shit. The natural reaction of the market is that the US dollar loses value because no one buys American.

Once the US dollar is low, big companies stop making massive profits from doing jack-shit. Instead, the actual companies that are useful to making a country powerful, aka manufacturing companies, actually start PRODUCING THINGS (god forbid!).

The US having a low dollar is not a bad thing. The value of ANY countries Dollar is ONLY relevant with respect to how people spend their money.

Useless companies will go under. Commodities and manufacturing will soar. American productivity will go up.

The dollar "collapsing" merely signifies that the current American model of selling shit is wrong. In a free market this will rectify itself as "old money CEO's" die out and young entrepenuers make a fuckload by filling the gaps.

Want to travel? How about seeing some of your own goddamn country for once, instead of flying to paris for a weekend of boutique shopping. Problem solved.

As an Australian, I look forward to having something in my house that has a "made in the US" label instead everything being labelled "made in Taiwan".
Click to expand...

An additional and oft overlooked problem is that the U.S.A. is over regulated. It is much easier for companies to shift abroad and avoid the hassles that go along with producing wealth in the U.S.A.

The problem with the dollar losing value is that foreign exporters want to get paid and when they eventually realise that the U.S.A. has nothing to offer except IOU's they will shut off their supply to the U.S.A. and will instead trade with countries who can pay. When this occurs the standard of living in the U.S. will drop markedly.

Get your ration cards.
 
Piata said:
It's strange... economists keep saying Canada's economy has shown "extraordinary resilience" in light of the US economy tanking. We pay down our debt every year, unemployment is at a low and our housing market hasn't crashed.

The only thing Canada has really lost is manufacturing jobs, due to Americans not buying anything.
Click to expand...

Well your economy shrank in Q1 while the US's kept growing. You have a higher unemployment rate and higher debt than the US.
 
JackBootedThug said:
The problem with the dollar losing value is that foreign exporters want to get paid and when they eventually realise that the U.S.A. has nothing to offer except IOU's they will shut off their supply to the U.S.A. and will instead trade with countries who can pay. When this occurs the standard of living in the U.S. will drop markedly.

Get your ration cards.
Click to expand...

That makes no sense whatsoever
 
ScottTheWise13 said:
Well your economy shrank in Q1 while the US's kept growing. You have a higher unemployment rate and higher debt than the US.
Click to expand...

Unemployment Rate
Canada - 6.2% (2008) (Up from 6.0 in 2007)
U.S.A. - 5.5% (2008) (Up from 4.6 in 2007)

Public Debt
Canada - 68.5% of GDP
U.S.A. - 60.8% of GDP

External Debt
Canada - $758.6 billion (30 June 2007)
U.S.A. - $12.25 trillion (30 June 2007)

Unemployment rates are close as are %gdp debts. External debt, er...

I couldn't find any GDP statistics for 2008. I can't imagine these two countries would be too dissimilar in that respect either.
 
issues said:
Unemployment Rate
Canada - 6.2% (2008) (Up from 6.0 in 2007)
U.S.A. - 5.5% (2008) (Up from 4.6 in 2007)
Click to expand...

The problem here is that i dont think the US official unemployment data is legit.

I believe that they basically ignore terminally or long-term unemployed and they ignore underemployment, which is a HUGE issue for our economy.
 
issues said:
Unemployment Rate
Canada - 6.2% (2008) (Up from 6.0 in 2007)
U.S.A. - 5.5% (2008) (Up from 4.6 in 2007)

Public Debt
Canada - 68.5% of GDP
U.S.A. - 60.8% of GDP

External Debt
Canada - $758.6 billion (30 June 2007)
U.S.A. - $12.25 trillion (30 June 2007)

Unemployment rates are close as are %gdp debts. External debt, er...

I couldn't find any GDP statistics for 2008. I can't imagine these two countries would be too dissimilar in that respect either.
Click to expand...

Yeah I never said it was hugely worse. I am just saying that orbitals threads often bash the US for those things when, in fact, Canada has much the same and often worse, statistics. I am just trying to make people view things with some context, in a wider perspective (eg. is the US really doomed due to debt when every Western country has lots of debt?)

GDP stats for q1 were something like -.3% for Canada and +1% for US.
 
TseTse said:
The problem here is that i dont think the US official unemployment data is legit.

I believe that they basically ignore terminally or long-term unemployed and they ignore underemployment, which is a HUGE issue for our economy.
Click to expand...

Well our methods are similar to those used across the western world. the BLS, in addition to the headline rate, finds several other unemployment rates, including the long-term unemployment rate, the rate of discouraged workers, and part time workers who want to work full time (underemployed).

If you think that understates unemployment, the headline rate also doesn't include the self-employed who work from home, which would lead to overstating employment, as there are lots of self-employed people in the US.
 
Jagonath said:
The value of the dollar is not a local basketball team score.

I Repeat, THE VALUE OF THE DOLLAR IS NOT A LOCAL BASKETBALL TEAM SCORE.

China has been growing their economy at 10%+ every year. How? By artificially keeping the value of their dollar LOW.

The US has been buying too much foreign shit. The natural reaction of the market is that the US dollar loses value because no one buys American.

Once the US dollar is low, big companies stop making massive profits from doing jack-shit. Instead, the actual companies that are useful to making a country powerful, aka manufacturing companies, actually start PRODUCING THINGS (god forbid!).

The US having a low dollar is not a bad thing. The value of ANY countries Dollar is ONLY relevant with respect to how people spend their money.

Useless companies will go under. Commodities and manufacturing will soar. American productivity will go up.

The dollar "collapsing" merely signifies that the current American model of selling shit is wrong. In a free market this will rectify itself as "old money CEO's" die out and young entrepenuers make a fuckload by filling the gaps.

Want to travel? How about seeing some of your own goddamn country for once, instead of flying to paris for a weekend of boutique shopping. Problem solved.

As an Australian, I look forward to having something in my house that has a "made in the US" label instead everything being labelled "made in Taiwan".
Click to expand...

The problem isnt USA buying foreign shit. That's more an effect than a cause.

We're not PRODUCING shit for the global market, like we used to. We went from being the world's manufacturing engine to a fat ass "service economy." We're not merely buying foreign shit. We're buying everything... on credit.

And our fat asses are now for sale. Cheap by global currency standards.

In the next 20 years, i think the major theme will increasingly be how all kinds of major "american" stuff is being bought by foreign investors. What's been happening is just scratching the surface.

Ironically... our remaining top production assets will be bought out.

Think about what's happening in the long-term...

Our empire has failed and the last 8 years have pretty much solidified our collapse.
 
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of course the dollar will inevitably collapse, i doubt were going to have seperate forms of currency in the world after the great meteor strike of 2013 that takes out most of asia.

waiting for world credits
 
ScottTheWise13 said:
Well our methods are similar to those used across the western world. the BLS, in addition to the headline rate, finds several other unemployment rates, including the long-term unemployment rate, the rate of discouraged workers, and part time workers who want to work full time (underemployed).

If you think that understates unemployment, the headline rate also doesn't include the self-employed who work from home, which would lead to overstating employment, as there are lots of self-employed people in the US.
Click to expand...

So, basically these figures are non-sense across the board.

And furthermore, we dont really know how different our economy is along these lines compared to many other western nations. I'd be curious if we have more, less or the same amounts of these underemployed and long-term unemployed. I assume we have a lot more self-employed than the others.
 
TseTse said:
The problem isnt USA buying foreign shit. That's more an effect than a cause.

We're not PRODUCING shit for the global market, like we used to. We went from being the world's manufacturing engine to a fat ass "service economy." We're not merely buying foreign shit. We're buying everything... on credit.
Click to expand...

Well we still have, by far, the largest manufacturing sector in the world.
 
TseTse said:
So, basically these figures are non-sense across the board.

And furthermore, we dont really know how different our economy is along these lines compared to many other western nations. I'd be curious if we have more, less or the same amounts of these underemployed and long-term unemployed. I assume we have a lot more self-employed than the others.
Click to expand...

I'm just saying if you want to choose to not believe US unemployment numbers, you have to not believe any country's unemployment numbers.

I dont know about rates of underemployment, but I have heard statistics that there are far smaller rates of long term unemployment in the US than in other countries.
 
I suspect long-term unemployment & underemployment is a lot higher (perhaps in many nations) than folks want to believe.

ScottTheWise13 said:
Well we still have, by far, the largest manufacturing sector in the world.
Click to expand...

I believe our productivity is still top notch, too.

But the sector is shrinking and has been shrinking for decades, while costs increase, debt increases and the dollar gets weaker. Not good.

dmanemp_max_630_378.png


Those are figures akin to the 1950s. Where is the middle class?

We're still being bought out and our economy is increasingly rooted in services & debt.

I'm saying that i fear things continuing as they are now, into a deep recession without the USA getting serious about its future... will mean that most of our major industrial assets will eventually have For Sale signs on them in the coming decade or two. Many already do.
 
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