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"The true inflation rate in America? It's certainly at least 6 or 7 percent, the US government lies about it, as you know, everybody who shops knows that prices are up, everybody except the US government. Rogers repeated his view that the Fed's quantitative easing program is "debasing the currency" and said he was "extremely worried" about the fate of the dollar over the long term. Asia is the region where investors should go, as countries in that region have strong reserves while once-strong economies such as the US and the UK are now in debt, he said.

""Information is the currency of democracy." Thomas Jefferson"

Both Republicans and Democrats have been explaining that "There Is No Alternative," we need public policies promoting austerity because government is "out of money." The question seems to be not "do we need austerity?" but "will we be austere sooner or austere later?" Meanwhile, the bipartisan consensus is that the government is definitely out of money. But these assertions are at odds with the common knowledge that the U.S. government literally creates its own money. Unlike the euro, the dollar is a sovereign, fiat currency, unconstrained by exchange rates or treaties. And since Nixon closed the gold window, government can issue dollars without waiting for gold or silver mines to provide any backing for them. So we can't possibly be "out of money," any more than the Bureau of Weights and Measures can be "out of inches."

The G-7 abandons the dollar. The greenback fell further after the G-7 would not come to the rescue.

Isn't it fiinally time to enact a "basic income guarantee"? The lack of individual and family income security in the midst of a highly-developed economy is a travesty under any circumstances. But the contradiction of "poverty in the midst of plenty" that has plagued the world since the start of the Industrial Revolution is becoming much more grave in the U.S. and abroad. The problem, of course, is one of distribution of earnings, and excess production capacity relative to available income... Winston Churchill gave eloquent testimony to this conundrum of the modern age when delivering the Romanes Lecture at Oxford University on June 19, 1930. This was a few months after the crash of the U.S. stock market marked the start of the Great Depression. Churchill said: "Who would have thought that it would be easier to produce by toil and skill all the most necessary or desirable commodities than it is to find consumers for them? Who would have thought that cheap and abundant supplies of all the basic commodities would find the science and civilization of the world unable to utilize them? Have all our triumphs of research and organization bequeathed us only a new punishment: the Curse of Plenty? Are we really to believe that no better adjustment can be made between supply and demand? Yet the fact remains that every attempt has failed. Many various attempts have been made, from the extremes of Communism in Russia to the extremes of Capitalism in the United States. They include every form of fiscal policy and currency policy. But all have failed, and we have advanced little further in this quest than in barbaric times. Surely it is this mysterious crack and fissure at the basis of all our arrangements and apparatus upon which the keenest minds throughout the world should be concentrated.

10/05/09 Stockholm, Sweden Even with the US dollar's deterioration over the past six months, the G7 has decided to let it continue to fall. Forbes reports today that the G7 "abandons the dollar." This is despite problems, such as economic instability, that a weakening dollar can cause central bankers around the world. From the US perspective, there are some benefits associated with a weaker dollar, in terms of increased exports and the possibility of inflating away the massive debt the government is building up so quickly.