Posted By:
Frank WakefieldI think it is 'merely', not 'nearly'...
Other than that I think ya'll are about correct up there, Bruce. We're not there, but we're headed there.
The Saudi currency is tied to the dollar. Oil is traded in dollars (but that might soon change). I drove across Texas twice just over a year ago. Rusty stuff was being cleaned off, new stuff booming. The oil price increases seemed to be good for Texas... hard on the rest of our country. I think this decline in the dollar was partly to deal with the Saudi's, and partly to held a certain segment of folks in our country.
And before I get to my point, look at your Fed refund check if you get one, or at the $600 bail out check that comes in a few weeks... it will be on a bank in Austin, Texas. Golly, if I had a bank I'd be willing to pay the Treasury for the privilege of sending those checks out. 300 million americans, maybe 150 million $600 checks on average, that would be $90 billion. What would the interest be on 90 billion for one day? What if folks left their checks in the mail box a day or two? Or on the fridge until the end of the week?? A bank in Texas could make a lot of money on that.
I think the financial wellbeing of our country was disguised about 4 years ago by a falsified housing/construction boom financed by subprime mortgages and the like. The financial woes of that are now apparent. I think things will become like Bruce says in a few months. And we'll eventually get out of it in a couple of years... maybe 3, after it has reached its low point. So bad times around election-time. And things will be better by next election-time.