U.S. Duller

(Graphic: New York Times Online; December 7, 2009)

You may have heard something about the U.S. Dollar recently. I try to keep up, so for those boys and girls who weren't paying attention, I can say that, had you given a damn and been listening, what you might have heard wasn't very positive.

Basically, the value of the USD against other major world currencies (The Euro; the British Pound; the Japanese Yen; the Russian Ruble, and even the lowly Canadian Dollar and the Mexican Peso) has been getting weaker.

What's that mean? Well, Virginia -- at its most basic, it means that if you're vacationing in Europe (like anyone I know can afford that)and paying 100 Euro per night for a hotel room meant you were really shelling out $148 US (1 euro = $1.48 US). I think you know where this is going.

If the value of the Euro rises, and it's 1 Euro equals, say, $1.56... your hotel room is now costing you $156 per night. It also means you'll pay more for European products (clothing; electronics; automobiles; handcrafts, and perfumes and jewelry), either in Europe or sold back home in the U.S.

It's exactly the reverse for Euro-tourists. Their Bang-For-The-Euro goes up, and American goods, services and products are all that much cheaper. Over the past year tourism in San Francisco seems to have gone way up, compared with the Go-Go Lil'-Boots-Bush years -- when the dollar was not only stronger, but nearly everyone on the planet hated our collective asses and, literally, almost no one wanted to vacation here.

How does this happen? I don't know. I understand that currency traders -- Arbitragers -- have something to do with it. Also the buying and selling of currencies by the central banks of major nations. I think it's got more to do with the tides and the phases of the moon, but I'm a dog and what the hell do I know.

Having a weaker currency relative to other countries' is not necessarily a bad thing. The New York Times online posted one of their very nice and really big graphics to show us why; one of the good things about the Times is that they have a talented crew of information content designers, whose job it is to take complex situations and distill them to a level where people who don't think about these things often, and dogs, can understand them more easily.