Consumer Bites: 03/19/08
- Tent cities full of former homeowners are springing up in the O.C. (bet you missed that episode), but we still aren’t sure if we are in a recession. (link)
- Currency exchanges won’t accept the American dollar in it’s current pitiful state, but we still don’t know if we are in a recession. (link)
Posted by consumatron on March 19th, 2008 filed in
March 19th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
One measure that I think gets left out of a lot of economic reports is how much the dollar has dropped in value compared to other currencies. You need about 50% more dollars now than you did 5 years ago when the war started to buy any given quantity of euros. If you use financial markets to get an idea of how the domestic economy is doing, you have to remember that american markets are valued in dollars. So, while the Dow Jones Industrial average is up to 12,000 from 8,000 over that period (50% up), to an international investor there has been zero growth in the value of US investments. I believe this analysis holds true if you look at numbers for Gross Domestic Product as well, but I’m working quickly. That’s 5 years of zero growth in the US.