OPINION:
The condition of the dollar is a major danger. As President Obama continues to devalue our dollar with his policies, other countries won’t just stand idly by and allow their interests to go down the drain. They will stop buying bonds and other instruments and use their hoards of dollars to buy other hard assets that won’t depreciate as the dollar spirals downward.
Currently, the dollar is known as a reserve currency, making it the basis upon which prices are determined. Oil, for instance, is priced in dollars. Significantly, there are currently talks going on among the other major consumers and producers of oil to change how oil is priced to a basket of currencies and commodities. If that happens and countries don’t need dollars for their international trading, things could go from bad to worse.
Since we finance 48 percent of our spending with debt by selling bonds and securities to foreign countries and investors, what happens when they stop? Currently, we are printing money to take up the slack. That is what happened in Germany and Argentina. This is why gold and silver have had such a run and why many are predicting that those commodities will continue to go up. Paper currencies have no intrinsic value other than the strength of the currency in the world marketplace.
Americans have always been up to a challenge and have always come back. The saying “don’t bet against the United States” is still something that I believe in, but we need strong leadership to fix this mess.
CHRISTOPHER S. MOODY
Gaithersburg, Md.
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