Take THAT, koogerrand!

*end zone dance*

In your face, South Africa!

The Dollar went all Sergeant Murtaugh on their asses.

Hahahah! Lethal Weapon was the first thing that popped into my head. Where do I get a cheap flight down there, now is the time to see Cape of Good Hope.

bush=president hoover.

@ironchef: you=idiot. Bush didn't do this. Ben Burnake and his rate lowering bs to bail out people and banks who can't handle settling deals on homes people can actually afford.

But you keep blaming Bush, I'd hate you to actually have to think logically about something.

@Bladefist: I agree, Bernake fucked us royally. Say it with me now "We want Greenspan! We want Greenspan!"

@amodlin: It would appear Greenspan would be better, or maybe, perhaps a monkey. Take your pick. Burnake is playing catch up. The job, is to stay ahead of the game.

@Bladefist: And who was the rocket scientist who appointed Bernanke Fed chairman? Hmm?

@Steaming Pile: Hmmm, Bush? Look, I see what you're going for. But this Ben guy is responsible. It's his job. And he is blowing it. I hope everyday I wake up and hear Bush fired him. I don't know, I feel there has to be some personal responsibility. If I type in the wrong text at work, and I erase the entire company database, is it my bosses fault? No. It's my fault. I dunno. It's touchy. If the president was anybody else, it wouldn't get directly blamed on them.

graphs look more dramatic if you don't start the scale at 0.

hmmm.. the Canadian Dollar is about equal with the US dollar and the Peso is a few cents shy.

Anybody else smell an NAFTA AMERO comming soon?

This is pretty good news if you're planning on going to the World Cup in 2010.

@Bladefist:

The buck stops where?

@Bladefist: I think Bush also deserves a measure of blame here, along with the Congress. We're sustaining the Iraq "war" by printing massive amounts of funny money. The rest of the world is smart enough to realize we can't really get away with that long term, and this is now reflected in the perceived value of the US dollar.

I'm not saying Bush or Congress is 100% clean here. I'm saying, you have one man responsible for all of it. 1 Man. And he is screwing it up. Why can't we blame him?

Ok guys, don't complain about a trade deficient when the dollar goes back up please.

@Bladefist: Bush, Bernake, Congress, the last succession of 4-5 presidents.. There's a lot of people that have led to this mess. Bush and the complacent congress have only sped it up with ridiculous inflation to cover their costs. The US has been falling deeper into debt nearly every single year for a very long time now. I agree with SkankingMike, it's simply way to co-incidental that the Canadian dollar and Peso would rise so sharply and now are staying nearly even with the US dollar.

You DON'T want an Amero. Ask Europe, each country has to submit to laws that superceed your own constitutions, and you get no vote or say in the making of those laws.

@Bladefist: Using your database analogy, your boss would be the one to catch shit for it. If you are responsible for updating databases, it's likely that your boss is responsible for maintaining valid backups.... or responsible for delegating that task to someone. And if he/she is a responsible boss, they would check to make sure that said back ups exist.

This failure doesn't rest on one mans shoulders. The fact that Bush and Congress have allowed this to go on mean they are equally at fault.

@Bladefist: The currency is being devalued because there is too much supply. Part of the reason for that is the need to print money to pay the 3 Trillion dolloars Iraq will cost us. That's Bush's fault.

But Ironchief is wrong... Bush is far worse than Hoover. Hoover didn't get anyone killed through his stupidity.

@Skankingmike:

You'd be a lot more credible if you learned about decimal points. Take a look at the USD/Peso chart again.

This is also a classic example of misleading chart design. The $ has clearly weakened, but having these charts not start at zero makes the weakening seem greater than it actually is.

Here's hoping they compare $US against Parker Bros. money w/ the choo-choos and the terrier on it.

@JustThatGuy3: Oooooh. Good catch!

@foxbat2500: Ok, so you blame the 3 trillion spent on Iraq. Fair enough. Do you support national health care? It cost more for the war. I'm eagerly waiting your hypocrisy. Solely speaking of money. Don't bring anything else into it. If Iraq's bill is causing this, then something more expensive, cant help. Right? Right.

cost more THEN the war. My bad.

@Trai_Dep: The problem with the printing money thing: Not many people know about it. The only reason I know about it, is in Ron Paul's bumbling ramblings, he mentioned it, and I looked it up. Maybe I read all the wrong places, but there is virtually no way for anyone to be informed on that.

@amodlin: Greenspan's serial bubble-blowing is why we're *in* this hole to begin with. Bernanke's just the man currently holding the shovel. At least he's studied the Great Depression, so he knows what we're potentially up against. There are things he's done I disagree with, but I'm not sure there's anyone else who'd be doing a better job right now.

@WiglyWorm: Sign on Bush's desk: "The Buck Stops Somewhere Else."

To be fair, though, the president (*any* president) has very little control over the economy one way or the other. They're always quick to take credit when it does well, though, so I guess the flip side is they tend to get blamed when it does poorly.

@Bladefist: A national health care plan would at least have some economic benefits, by reducing the amount of money companies have to put into employee benefits. The war in Iraq is just an endless money pit, and one that's funded off-budget to boot.

@Orv: Nothing is free. And I don't want to Hi-Jack this thread and turn it into a health care one. The costs will be re-organized, but it won't save any of us any money.

@Bladefist: Well, you can believe that if you want, but studies of national health care systems in other countries have found them to have lower overhead than the U.S. system. So at very least we'll save a lot of the money that's currently going to administrative costs and insurance company profits. Even the much-maligned government Medicare program has significantly lower overhead than private insurance, to the point where private Medicare plans have to be subsidized to compete with it.

I realize the argument you're making makes a certain intuitive sense, but the fact is we spend more per capita on health care than any other country, and overall we're less healthy. Clearly there's something inferior about our approach to the problem.

@Bladefist: If properly executed (ie, single-payer, not Obama's or Hillary's plans) then national healthcare would SAVE us money over what we are doing currently. We can't afford NOT to do it.

The real cause of our currency declining is that wealth is evaporating out of America. We are all becoming poorer, because we are sending our money to other countries, our government is spending money we don't have by waging wars on credit while refusing to raise taxes to pay for them, and we are creating money to try to get us out of our problems (which is really just an "inflation tax" instead of a direct tax - how do you conservatives feel about that?). We need to fix the fundamental problems with our country, which have to do with bad government and unsustainable lifestyles, in order to stop the bleeding. Right now what we're doing is like using a credit card to keep doing what we're doing instead of bringing ourselves back under budget.

@Bladefist: True, but maybe the money we pay will go to help people who can't afford coverage on their own instead of buying a third Rolls for some CEO.

@Orv: Dont forget about the hundreds of thousands who will lose their jobs.

@johnva: You cant tax your way out of every problem.

To quote Reagan:

Governments tend not to solve problems, only to rearrange them.

@Bladefist:
Hmmm let's see...

uncontrolled deficit spending (Bush)
Iraq war jacking up oil prices (Bush)
Half trillion spent on Iraq war with $120 billion per year (Bush)
No energy policy for the last 7 years (Bush)
Weak dollar policy (Bush)
[www.businessweek.com]
Bernake appointment (Bush)

LOL@bladefist for not dealing with reality.

@foxbat2500: I think plenty of people died in muggings or starved in hoovervilles as a result of hoover's stupidity.

I've always thought that bush would go down in history as the 2nd worst president, right behind hoover.

I've thought this since 2000.

That's because South Africa is even more f*'ed up than the US - constant rolling blackouts, crime out the ass, mob riots, looting, and immolation of foreigners in the slums, 1-in-5 citizens plan to emigrate, and their leading candidate for the next president rapes 14 yr-old girls...oh yeah, and they smoke anti-retrovirals as hallucinogens...

@HeartBurnKid: I appreciate your sentiments. But it is not my job to provide health care for people who cannot afford it. That is called socialism. And I have a constitutional right to be free and prosper. And wealth redistribution is not what America is about.

The Government has to abide by the Constitution and protect me. Hence Iraq. No where in the Constitution does it say anything about you have the right to have health care. You don't.

And those CEO's have the right to have 40 Yatchs. Thats the premise. Call me a bad man. But I'm just a middle class white guy trying to make it. I don't need other peoples problems. I got my own.

This is so much bad science that I do not even know where to start. Yes, dollar is weaker but:
- all these charts are not to scale, 20% vs Euro and 3% vs Peso look the same,
- arbitrarily chosen time to show what people want to believe.

@Bladefist: Again, you can keep using your scare tactics, but you've got a big credibility gap to overcome. No other first-world country does it our way, and they all spend less money and have healthier populations with longer life expectancies. That makes it pretty hard to argue our health care system is the best.

@Bladefist: Also, Iraq was never a threat to us. Invading Iraq did nothing to protect you. (Invading Afghanistan, now there I think you'd have an argument.)

@ironchef:

uncontrolled deficit spending (Bush)
Yes. With Congress Help.

Iraq war jacking up oil prices (Bush)
Nope. Not why oil is up.

Half trillion spent on Iraq war with $120 billion per year (Bush)
Small price to pay. I don't want to co-exist with suicide bombers

No energy policy for the last 7 years (Bush)
Congress Democrats block any advances. They think taxes will fix the problem.

Weak dollar policy (Bush)
Bush has a weak dollar policy? I missed that.

Bernake appointment (Bush)
Yes, but read some comments above you. He inherited problems, and he is a bone head.

bladefist probably still thinks saddam's behind 9/11 with imaginary WMDs poised to attack america.

so why did we invade iraq again? or did the excuse change?

@Orv: Maybe we aren't first world. Maybe we are 0 world. I think we are better then Canada, Germany, England, France, Japan, China.

You could argue Korea.

@ironchef: Because their government allowed terrorist to hide there. OOOO quiz me again.

@Bladefist: Better how? Certainly not from a life expectancy standpoint. Is this some touchy-feely, patriotic, "my nation right or wrong" version of "better," or one that you can back up with numbers?

@Bladefist: Bzzt, try again. Saddam distrusted and disliked Al Queda. There's no evidence they had a presence in Iraq before we invaded.

@Bladefist: Reagan was a self-serving sophist. That would have more meaning if he wasn't personally responsible for a lot of these destructive policies like incredible deficit spending really kicking into high gear.

I agree that you can't tax your way out of every problem, but I also think that you can't deficit-spend your way out of every problem, either. Republicans seemingly refuse to accept the truth of that (though I don't know whether *you* actually agree with the Republicans on this). The fact is, government deficit spending is costing you money by devaluing the dollars you hold. At least with progressive taxation the spending can be paid for by people who can afford it more easily (I believe this is the main reason for Republican deficit spending: to force more of the burden of paying for government onto the poor and middle class and less on the rich).

As for government just "rearranging problems", that's just stupid. Do you think government was just "rearranging the problem" when they spent tons of money on defense in order to try to undermine the Soviets? Reagan was a liar, and was just using nice-sounding rhetoric while doing something entirely different.

@Orv: Well the numbers are there. I'm at work, I can't write a senior paper for you.

However, it's also a bit of the touchy-feely part. I live in a country where I can have anything I want if I set my mind to it. I don't have a 60% tax because I'm paying for people who never got up off their ass. I could go for days on this issue. Lets not?

@Bladefist:

GOP majority in congress for most of his failed presidency. Bush is the one that SUBMITS the budget to congress. In his entire presidency, he only made 2 vetoes (last year, after the damage was already done).