So much for my Australian vacation

[Lissa]

The Australian dollar is trading now at 0.92 to the US $, up from 0.75 not too long ago. Along with the Candian loonie, the 'Roo will soon surpass the greenback in trading parity, if current trends continue (budget & trading deficits), and there's no reason to expect otherwise.

I guess I won't be going to Australia anytime soon....

But soon, the US dollar is going to experience a Wile E. Coyote moment, where it will realize there isn't any ground underneath it, and it will plunge precipitously to a mushroom cloud on a canyon floor.

Be forewarned. The consequences will be grave.

When the US economy goes, it's going to take a lot of other economies with it. Already stock analysts have been noting that the asian exchanges have been forming bubbles over the past few years and some of them are getting ripe to popping, only a few (notably the Chinese and Japanese, and to a lesser extent the Southern Koreans) have been trying to deflate their bubbles or contain them. When the US economy collapese, the world economy will probably go with it, or atleast most of the world economy.

As to our present situation and the issue with the mortgage crisis, this has more to do with underhanded lenders than anything else where they sold risky adjustable rate mortgages to people. They, the lenders, were more interested in the short term increase in profits than looking at the long term situtation for the economy and now it's coming back to bite everyone. The thing that annoys me most is while I had a non-risky loan and paid on time and have a good credit rating, I'm still going to have to show all kinds of proof when I purchase my next home because of the crap that these risky lenders caused.