Quote for the day …

“Give me control over a nation’s currency and I care not who makes its laws.”

– Baron M.A. Rothschild 

As Dollars Pile Up, Uneasy Traders Lower the Currency’s Value

The dollar was on a roll just a few months ago, bounding higher against foreign currencies as investors sought a safe hiding place for their money amid a global downturn. But now, many are rethinking their decision to buy American.

 The dollar skidded to its lowest point in five months this week, battered by creeping fears that Washington’s costly efforts to stimulate the economy are growing harder to finance and may set off an unwelcome bout of inflation. Analysts are increasingly concerned that a rise in prices could hurt consumer spending, deepening the recession.

 The Federal Reserve is printing money from thin air, and the government is issuing trillions of dollars in new debt as it tries to spend its way out of the recession with a huge stimulus package, new lending programs, health care overhauls and automotive rescues.

 Experts warned there might not be enough demand to sop up all those new dollars and dollar-denominated Treasury securities. That led investors to fret about the sustainability of the United States government’s AAA sovereign credit rating after the Standard & Poor’s ratings agency warned this week that the sovereign rating of Britain — which is spending hundreds of billions of pounds to engineer a recovery — is under threat. 

Here’s a great video showing the risk in the U.S. dollar …

U.S. Jobless Rate Likely to Pass Europe’s 

FOR many years, unemployment in the United States was lower than in Western Europe, a fact often cited by people who argued that the flexibility inherent in the American system — it is easier to both hire and fire workers than in many European countries — produced more jobs.

 That is no longer the case. Unemployment in the United States has risen to European averages, and seems likely to pass them when international data for April is calculated. 

XX Sean’s note – the takeaway from this isn’t that US unemployment is temporarily higher than European unemployment.  Give us a few months and the situation could be reversed again.  I think what we might learn from this is that no country or economic system is immune to high unemployment.  In that case, a European-style social safety net might be a superior way of smoothing out fluctuations in human welfare and easing the pain on working people and the cities and states that collect revenue from them. 

A list of oil and gas projects and oil refinery expansion plans that have been delayed or cancelled so far in 2009. The global financial crisis, falling oil demand, a slide in prices and poor general market conditions have prompted many in the industry to scale back spending and delay projects. 

Mexican oil exports plunged 18.2% in April to levels unseen since 1990 outside hurricane seasons, in more grim news for a key economic motor relied on for a major chunk of government revenues.Crude export volumes tumbled to 1.177 million barrels per day as yields at Mexico’s aging Cantarell field continued to plummet, state oil monopoly Pemex said today. Oil production declined 4.2% year-on-year to 2.642 million bpd in April, the fourth month in a row that it has been below a targeted level of 2.7 million bpd, according to a Reuters report.

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