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who's ever balanced a checkbook knows the money flow has to be a two-way street: you can only take so much money out before you have to bring some in from somewhere. Trade exports to Mexico only total about $8 billion dollars. The response of the US government to this obvious loss of dollars? Print some more dollars! Worse yet, they then provide those still-wet dollars to financial institutions which immediately parlay each one into a thousand times its value in loans. Can we say sub-prime', boys and girls?

Dollars for war, for environmental causes, for foreign aid, for food stamps, the UN and Medicare and inaugural balls-all printed (borrowed) and flowing ultimately down a rat hole of no return to other countries. Government appears not to know that the money they borrow is supposed to be paid back and with a faltering economy injured by unfair trade policies there is little hope of that ever happening. Other countries realize this: we have literally papered the world with the US dollar-and when dollars are so easily spread around, they lose value. They are no longer a scarce commodity. Other countries are no longer eager to buy our bonds as they know we have overextended ourselves borrowing money, perhaps to provide them with generous aid-and they know there is nothing but our word to back these dollars up. They no longer wish to peg the price of commodities such as oil to the US dollar, preferring instead the Euro, partially backed by gold and rising fast against the dollar.

Inevitably, an economy based on credit and debt must fail. You can NOT borrow yourself out of debt. But the charade continues. This week, in an effort at economic stimulus' President Bush-and most major presidential candidates, promise to rebate' hundreds of dollars to American families to stimulate the economy. And where will this money come from? Why, they'll borrow even more freshly-printed dollars from the Fed. And eventually, this will cause the value of the dollar to slip farther down the slippery slope.
The American people must demand that our elected officials stop borrowing and spending and funneling our assets out of the country. Only then will our currency regain respect in the world markets and the value of the dollar once again become strong.

Learn more about this author, Linda Sunkle-Pierucki.
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