Dollar Smoke and Mirrors

For years I have followed the machinations of the U.S. Dollar Index. But then there was a time when this Index conveyed a useful message. Today, it’s simply smoke and mirrors.

Why is the U.S. Dollar Index irrelevant today? Because no matter whether it is rising or falling, the Dollar is in the process of dying. The Dollar Index today simply tells us how the Euro (and others in a basket of currencies) is doing in relation to the collapsing dollar.

If the Index is rising, the basket of currencies is recovering in its own relentless downtrend. If the Index is falling, the performance of the currency basket is even worse than that of the disappearing dollar. So I have renamed the Dollar Index the “Obama Index”. It is totally meaningless.

How then do we assess the real “progress” of the dollar as it pursues its one-way path to oblivion? The answer is easy...Watch the price of gold.

Greedy Danny Quits

So the Premier of Newfoundland has stepped down. Sad to say that this finally prompted me to go through his bio. I had only considered his recent years, when he chose to pummel PM Harper without justification, and he fled to the U.S. with his heart problem. I thought of him as Don Quixote – some kind of foolish savant.

I can speculate that by now he knows that he hasn’t solved his heart problem, and my guess is that he has developed crippling arthritis to boot. I’ve been down that road, and if he calls me I’ll give him some help.

Why offer my assistance?

Because I have now looked at his early career and discovered that he may have started out objecting to child abusers, and then he definitely tackled the predatory province of Quebec in a big way. So he went after the windmill on huge home turf issues that had made his political predecessors cringe.

I have always known that beneath his scrappy exterior, Danny is brilliant, and there is no denying that he used that intelligence to transform Newfoundland for the better.

I don’t like bullies, but I’ll have to make an exception for this one. On balance, Danny beat the windmill.

I wish him well.