As Dollar Falls, Legacy of the Failed Bush Administration is Cemented in Euros

Washington - For over half a century, the US dollar has been the preeminent form of legal tender in the world. Much of today's global trade is priced in dollars, even if the item in question isn't being sold or bought by a US firm. Most of the foreign exchange held by national central banks is dollars — not British pounds, Chinese renminbi, or Japanese yen.

But in recent months, the king of currencies has taken it on the chin. Since August the dollar has shrunk about 6 percent in value, measured against an assortment of its fellows. Perhaps more important, it may be losing cachet overseas: Tourists can no longer pay in dollars to enter the Taj Mahal and other Indian national landmarks, for instance.

Is the dollar set to lose its top status and the national financial advantages that entails? It has swooned and recovered before, most notably in the 1970s and late 1980s.

But there's a difference this time. The dollar has a credible rival: the euro

Its truly freightening when virtually nobody in the Bush Administration seems to do a single thing about the free fall in the value of the U.S. Dollar against the Euro and other currencies. It apparently makes no difference to the Bushies that the oil producing countries now want to shift from using the dollar as the basis for oil sales to the Euro. It seems to make no difference to the Bushies that money markets around the globe are tip toeing around the wisdom of investing in the dollar. And it certainly makes no differnce to the Bushies that our national debt is increasing at more than a million dollars a minute. Even that is related, at least peripherally, to the decline of the dollar.

Nope, the Bushies don't care one iota about any of that. They are only interested in obfuscating the truth about Iran and Iraq and working to secure middle eastern oil fields for their campaign contributors.

Everyone who voted for this impossible situaiton in 2000 should be ashamed of themselves. And everyone who voted for it again in 2004 thinking Bush would make us "safe" needs to get their news from a source other than the Fox Opinion Network. You got exactly what you voted for. And now all of us but the top 1 percent are suffereing because of your vote. Thanks.