Today I am going to summarize three articles I have received recently which have to do with the US dollar. I've been watching this closely for about ten years, as our original plan was to retire early and expatriate. The plan was to have a better life yet spend less money, but we may have missed the window of opportunity. I am often reminded of all the stories I heard as a child, about growing up in the Great Depression. To make it all more creepy, I know people struggling to live abroad, and people on the USS Lincoln (off the coast of Iran), which makes our current economic mess all the more personal and ominous.

Dollar's fall forces new standard of frugality

Americans have been living large, often on borrowed money, as consumer spending represented more than 70% of our commerce and we bought more than we made and sold. Our trade deficit is $800,000,000,000, about 7% of the economy, aside from our budget deficit and national debt. Our news is all about what is rising (debt, unemployment, price of oil, war fatalities) and falling (value of the dollar, quality of life.) Foreigners are wary of investing in our economy, after lending us money to stop til we dropped and joining us in propping up sub-prime lending. As the feds push down interest rates, investors yank their money and put it to work where there is a higher rate of return. The dollar has lost 17% against the euro in one year's time. Our economy had grown since the end of WW2 but now it's the turn of China, India, a united Europe and Latin America.

As a country, we are tightening the belt on our collective fat stomach. Sales are up for rice, down for casinos. People do not normally cut back their standard of living. When food and fuel go up, values of homes and retirement funds drop, and it's hard to get credit, French wines, restaurant meals and imported cars go first. With increases in oil and foodstuffs, basic necessities are also affected. Credit is harder to get, which affects home buyers, those needing cars to get to work, and students needing to borrow money for school. Assets like home value and retirement funds shrink, so cannot be drawn on and no longer represent as much security. The upside is that people may actually have to put money down to buy a house. They may be given credit based on their actual ability to pay back loans. There may be more enthusiasm for clean energy and buying local.

The Dollar's Down But We're Not

Americans living abroad, such as those who work for foreign companies and pay in dollars, are having a hard time. They report cutting out mineral water, then restaurant meals, even at small neighborhood bistros. By now, those in Europe are absorbing the equivalent of a 50% pay cut. A Parisian quotes these prices: $50 for a dozen croissants, farmed salmon for $23/pound, $4 for a newspaper. Wine and soda are both too expensive, and some people have bought potted plants as they can't afford flowers any more. Many are selling their cars or even returning to the states (which means quitting jobs or stopping studies.) Any trips or returns to the States mean hours on-line, desperately seeking bargains or ways to cash in frequent flier miles.

A woman in Paris says:
"I think of stopping our subscription to Le Figaro, but not to the International Herald Tribune, without which we'd be lost. Cooperatives for exchanging the New Yorker have sprung up. I pass on my Times Literary Supplements and New York Reviews of Books to my friend Eric in Germany."

On top of it, people at home may not be sympathetic, not realizing that expats have to pay taxes in both countries and don't want to uproot their kids. Some specialities do not translate into jobs in the US. Doesn't the envy also suggest that people wonder if there might be places better to live than the US? Some people will accept fairly major reductions in quality of life in order to stay in Europe.

US Beats War Drum as Iran Dumps the Dollar

Let's hope this doesn't mean what it sounds like. A "senior military official" leaked to the press plans to publicly reveal evidence of weapons caches found in Iraq which can be traced directly back to Iran. They are the type of roadside bombs often used against occupying US forces. The plan to present this evidence of Iranian support for Shiite militias inside Iraq comes at the same time that Iran has dumped the dollar for oil trades. They will deal, like a certain supermodel, in Euros or yuan, rather than the dollar.

A second US aircraft carrier has arrived off the coast of Iran. Gates calls the carrier a "reminder" and not a threat elevation. Another "anonymous senior official" says the USS Lincoln replaces the USS Truman, which is returning to its home base. Some analysts believe that Saddam Hussein's decision to switch from the dollar to the euro precipitated "regime change," to protect American interests. Others wonder if others around the world may follow suit and dump some of their reserves of US Federal Reserve notes. This would bring the dollar down further and the cost of fuel upwards.

(graffiti from Belgium & Spain, where the dollar is currently worth US $.6459)

When did we know we had to leave?

Certainly the first indication was right before the 2004 election, after a year-plus of working hard, 24X7, to elect a smart, good, thoughtful, honest man to the White House. Richard and I were sitting in the car on the Sunday prior to election day. He hesitated before turning on the car. "I have a bad feeling," he said. "I have a sense that in churches all over America, people are being told to vote for Bush."

My mind reeled. I had been operating under the assumption that the good guys would win this time. I was much more concerned about what would happen to us WHEN John Kerry and John Edwards were elected. I was concerned because I genuinely respected and liked very few of the folks who were high up in the campaign at that point in time. It seemed to me that they were spending more energy on casting themselves in key roles inside the White House than they were in actually winning the hearts and minds of voters. Few of them seemed to even like or respect John Kerry himself. My concerns were split: that Richard would not find a place of integrity inside the new administration and/or that he WOULD and we would have to hang out with these sleazebags for years.

My concerns were unfounded, his were not.

It was on November 4, 2004 that I found the website for homes in Canada. There was a converted church listed, and it sat on the water, serenely overlooking lapping waves. It was open; it had flow and history.

I looked at the church until it disappeared, then noted when it returned, and then when it returned again.

Meanwhile, the political insiders who made up the bulk of our social lives split up and found camps to join: the MoveOn folks, the policy organizations, various NGOs, Media Matters, the Campaign for America's Future, etc., and, of course, various campaigns. We had a difficult time with all of the organizations; having begun the Democracy Cell Project, we found ourselves competing with much larger and sexier communities. No one believed in the power of a few knowledgeable and motivated folks to change the world, despite Margaret Mead's oft-quoted belief in that possibility. But most significantly, no one believed in the community management skills we had honed over the course of the Kerry Blog. What they did believe in: scaling, page views, market share.

We had nothing to offer on those fronts. Having worked in an atmosphere of the high-touch interactions, and having spent a lot of time and energy on learning how to shift perceptions and manage difficult people, we were uninterested in either the circle jerk of insiders or the ATM machines-for-change that were set up. We proposed helping the Congressional Progressive Caucus build a community and they passed. We advised the Kerry people on how to utilize the loyal supporters they had and were more-or-less ignored.

But we noted that both the Obama and Edwards campaigns were picking up on aspects of what we had promoted, and that felt validating.

As the Clinton campaign got rolling, we watched them make mistake after mistake, online and off. Our friends who were working there were uninterested in our perspectives, and that was OK. The message back to us was that we were a little quaint, under-informed, and possibly disloyal.

We went to Nova Scotia and visited the church, for sale again. it was old and needed work, but the perspective, the water, the distance from insanity, felt marvelous. We made an offer. A few minutes later, another offer came in, without our conditions. We lost the church.