New Quaker Notebook

Bush's Disastrous Dollar Policy
Washington Post
Thursday, November 8, 2007

President Bush doesn't talk about the dollar much, but when he does, he's got exactly one thing to say about it: "We have a strong dollar policy."

It's becoming increasingly clear, however, that Bush's "strong dollar policy" is driving the greenback into the ground.

The dollar is hitting record lows this week amidst fears that the mortgage-market meltdown will spread to other parts of the economy and as the Chinese make noise about moving more of their investments into euros. But it is the underlying dynamics of the American economy -- continued massive trade deficits and a whopping national debt -- that have put the dollar in such a precarious position.

A true strong dollar policy, aimed at increasing the confidence of international investors, would require Bush to do a bunch of things he doesn't want to do. For instance, he would have to stop borrowing so much money to fund his tax cuts and his wars. He would need to encourage the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates, rather than depend on it to keep propping up the domestic economy by decreasing them. That sort of thing.

Instead, Bush just offers the strong-dollar line, without specifics, and moves on.

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So there is a commonality with the President's claim that "We don't torture." He speaks a lie and makes it crisp and brusque, like an aphorism, as if he really is wise and his words are weighty: nothing more needs to be discussed, for he has spoken. So he speaks again, with another smirking aphorism.

So there is a cycle in the Cheney-Bush words of failure and the deeds of failure and these seem to swirl together into a maelstrom of failure—the MBA president decides to break the window, money flows to the military industrial complex, the military industrial complex takes over the US's Middle East interests, the US sinks into debt, the US dollar fails, still the US must repair its broken window ....

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