CALDEIRÃO DE BOLSA

Camisa Roxa Escreveu:sim, não vai haver default do debt, vai haver impressão de dólares como se não houvesse amanhã

mas acertaram em parte: hiperinflação is on the way

domhenri Escreveu:The US government defaults on its debt

Digital gold

Nixon's Treasury secretary, John Connally, told furious Europeans that the dollar was "our currency but your problem." The same could be said for today's dollar trouble, which is why French President Nicolas Sarkozy said plaintively last week that "the dollar cannot remain someone else's problem." For the United States, a falling dollar means pricier imports but also an export boom that could carry the U.S. economy through its housing bust. Yet for France and other countries that use the euro, a weak dollar means a loss of competitiveness -- not only against U.S. producers but also against dollar-pegging Asian exporters.

The falling dollar is a headache for the dollar-peggers, too. Their problem is the mirror image of the European one: Countries such as China and the Arab Gulf states are already experiencing an export boom that is overheating their economies. As a falling dollar drags down their currencies, this overheating gets worse. Meanwhile, they have accumulated vast piles of dollar assets that are now losing value. Saving on America's behalf turns out to be expensive.

So the world faces a dilemma. The last thing it wants is more dollar weakness, which is why central bankers in East Asia and the petro-states, which control most of the world's official reserves, are not about to dump U.S. bonds and trigger a collapse in the greenback. But the world may also draw the lesson that an alternative global currency needs to be the long-term goal. Households don't like saving in a currency that won't hold its value. Companies don't like building global supply chains based on a unit of account that fluctuates unstably.

Most economists assume that the dollar will continue to act as the global currency because there is no alternative.