This is what happens when you build "economic recovery" out of debt. Somehow, some way, a nation needs to create more wealth than it consumes - it cannot borrow forever. The other two major economies of the world, the European Union and the Chinese are sustaining economies that are actually creating wealth, and the people with the money are going to move it into those economies instead of ours.

As an economy, we have become risky and we now have lots of enemies and many who wish they were not forced to be our friends. I certainly don't see the French, the number 1 Euro-based economy, rushing out to prop up the dollar any time soon. The Russians , Bush's supposed pals, have already announced that they are selling the dollars they are holding, which will dump more and more of them on the market all next week. The Japanese are essentially saying and doing nothing. In essence we are seeing a world-wide drop in the stock price of USA, Inc for the same reason a corporation whose asset side of the balance sheet is shrinking while its liabilities increase would see its stock drop - we are just not worth as much as we used to be.

Many economists, and crash9 eluded to it on the other thread on the dropping dollar, think that Bush has made a fundamental mistake - thinking this will stimulate American manufacturing and raise employment- the problem is there is no longer any manufacturing to stimulate. Instead this will do the one thing that our debt-ridden nation cannot afford, which is cause interest rates to rise. In addition, the very first thing his party does after re-election is raise the debt ceiling by 800 billion dollars! A clear message to the rest of the world we have another round of drunken sailor spending coming from our Republican Congess. It's all going to spark another recession. Another four years of leadership that does absolutely nothing about our loss of a manufaturing base and continued addiction to foreign oil is going to put this country in the poorhouse for the rest of the century. The other economies are already wise to the fact that the only way out of it for a country that cannot create wealth is to steal it with our military -whether we are actually going to do it or not is immaterial, it is the perception that matters - and they are going to see that in their position of military weakness they have only one option to deal with us - bankrupt us.