According to this article in the Christian Sciemce Monitor the dollar could fall 25% in our not to distant future. It could be the only way to reduce our trade deficit. If Americans buy less in terms of foreign goods, the trade deficit falls. The hope being that Americans would be able to sell more goods overseas as the lower dollar would make our goods cheaper for the rest of the world. The trouble I see with this thinking is the loss of our industrial base in the United States. We really don't make much here anymore. Companies in the USA who are still in manufacturing have outsourced the factory work overseas in a large part. Our largest private industry is the restaurant business with the financial industry also being quite large here. How this translates into more exports for the USA escapes me. The comparison they make is to the 1980s, when we did have more manufacturing done here still. Now, we may be the largest maker of guns and other weapons, but what else are we really selling abroad really? We sell food, but what else? Building materials are sold to China, like cement, but that just makes these products more expensive here due to supply and demand. The cost of lumber is quite high here at this point in time. Globalization just wasn't a factor in the 80s as they are today. We had a debt in the Reagan years, but nothing like what we have now. The IMF is right to hold talks with the USA and China on what to do about this problem. Isn't it interesting that Bush is just now starting to talk about "the economy" and "diplomacy" as being important now that he's run us into the ground with his "long war"? It's been the pattern of every empire the earth has ever known. It will take decades to try and rectify the damage that has been done to us by the YOYO policies of the Bush administration and the Republican congress. We may never be as we were before. It's time to start asking what our future will look like in a post GWB world? I'm hoping it will be better in that we can finally start doing something about fossil fuel emmisons, our oil addiction, creating alternative energy and other exciting technology. It also means Americans will have to learn to live within their means and stop expecting to live as large. If it means we can restore a strong middle class to our nation, then that's a pretty good prospect for our future. It's ok to have reasonable expectations. We have to make sure the Enron accounting of our private industries, government and citizens comes to an end.