Rick Reuben wrote:The dollar bounced back when it dropped to $1.60 against the Euro.

I'm glad I made that decision to invest in the euro. And the Czech crown. Which, incidentally, is now at 15 against the dollar. It was 38 to the dollar back in '99. Back when the price for a half-liter beer was 15.

Today, it takes two entire US dollars to buy yourself a draught beer at many drinking establishments in the good old Republic. Imagine that.

Rick Reuben wrote:http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279

Paul Grignon's 47-minute animated presentation of "Money as Debt" tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it is being created.

Another .25 percent cut from the Fed just now. Remember to spend those rebate checks fast- the dollar is going to slide again.

Futures Traders Bet on Dollar Gain For First Time Since 2005

By Bo Nielsen and Ye Xie

May 2 (Bloomberg) -- Futures traders are betting for the first time since December 2005 that the dollar will gain against the euro.

The difference in the number of wagers by hedge funds and other large speculators on a decline in the euro compared with those on a gain, known as net shorts, was 21,315 on April 29, compared with net longs of 18,907 a week earlier, figures from the Washington-based Commodity Futures Trading Commission show.

``The dollar has already turned against the euro,'' said Benedikt Germanier, a currency strategist at UBS AG in Stamford, Connecticut. ``The dollar will go to $1.52 in a straight line.''

The dollar increased 0.3 percent to $1.5424 per euro at 5 p.m. in New York, from $1.5474 yesterday. It touched $1.5361, the highest level since March 24.

The dollar rose 1.3 percent against the euro this week, its biggest rally since March, and has appreciated 3.6 percent from a record low of $1.6019 reached on April 22. It's the first time the dollar has posted two weeks of gains since December.

The currency rose after the Federal Reserve cut interest rates on April 30 and said ``substantial'' easing since September would help foster growth. The Labor Department reported today that U.S. employers eliminated fewer jobs in April than forecast, indicating the labor market is weathering the economic slowdown.

Payrolls shrank by 20,000 last month following a revised decline of 81,000 in March. The median forecast of 82 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a drop of 75,000.

The yield advantage of two-year German bunds over comparable-maturity Treasuries has decreased to 1.40 percentage points from 1.85 percentage points on March 31, making dollar- denominated assets more attractive to investors.

The U.S. Dollar Index, which measures the currency against six major counterparts, touched 73.698, the highest level since March 5. The index fell to 70.698 on March 17, the lowest level since its 1973 inception.

To contact the reporters on this story: Bo Nielsen in New York at bnielsen4@bloomberg.net; Ye Xie in New York at yxie6@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: May 2, 2008 17:27 EDT

Euro shows signs of end to bull run
By Peter Garnham in London
Published: May 1 2008 20:43 | Last updated: May 1 2008 20:43

Speculation that the euro’s seven-year bull run was coming to an end intensified on Thursday as the single currency fell to five-week lows against the dollar and the pound.

Many economists are reaching the view that eurozone growth has slowed to the point where the European Central Bank will have to cut interest rates or risk stunting economic growth.

“Within the space of one week, the outlook for the eurozone has worsened significantly,” said Carsten Brzeski at ING Capital Markets. “Sound economic fundamentals are melting away.”

Recent eurozone data have been disappointing, with German business sentiment, measured by the Ifo institute, in April recording its biggest monthly fall since September 2001, while eurozone purchasing managers’ indexes have also fallen.

The European Central Bank has so far maintained a hawkish stance on interest rates.

As the Federal Reserve has slashed its main interest rate by 3.25 percentage points to 2 per cent since the start of the market turmoil last summer, and the Bank of England cut its main lending rate by 0.75 per cent to 5 per cent, the ECB has kept its official interest rate on hold at 4 per cent.

The diverging interest rate paths between the three central banks have given investors a reason to keep buying the euro, pushing it nearly 70 per cent higher against the dollar since 2001 and up almost 30 per cent against the pound.

Last month the euro reached an all-time high of $1.6018 against the dollar and a record high of £0.8097 against the pound. But it has since fallen 3.6 per cent, on Wednesday hitting $1.5438 against the dollar and £0.7802 against the pound, its weakest level since March 25.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Things are a bit crazy food prices are going way up as well I don't know if anyone else looks at this but the local number of new ads on crags list to sell stuff has been way up lately (the number of sale posts). A lot of moving out of town cause I lost my job sales. As well I see a lot of ebay sales not reach the reserve.

I think that over time the cooking of the books on the inflation and unemployment figures as well as other goverment statistics has put us in a unusual situation where gas and food prices are riseing at a crazy rate and it is not being reflected in the statistics. The move from Steak to Hamberger to Ken L Ration is in progress.

I think last months import - export figures were real odd, even with the added price of gas imports were way down I guess this means that retailers were not putting a lot of goods on order. The numbers supposidly made wall street go up that day.

Costco better stay in busness how else can I get a pallate of salsa and chips for summer! I went to a jewlery store to buy some gifts and the price of jewlery has some individual items I bought 5 years ago and they were twice the price (I know gold has gone up but that was crazy)

I think that the administration is doing a lot of cheerleading hoping that we will look and listen to the cheerleaders and lot look at the Gereatric paraplegics on our team or the scoreboard.

Lots of folks round these parts think May is the month to get out and take a "vacation" till fall and see how things are doing then.

Liked the Saudi's telling Bush to take a walk they were producing enough oil. In their eyes no doubt the tanking of the value of the dollar is a big contributer of the high price of oil.

Bush complained about the price of oil when Clinton was in office $38 a gallon at this point if you look at the dimished value of the dollar from that time a price of arouond $90 is not outside the consept of a steady price of a comodity (when tied to the price of gold from that time it may even be seen as cheap). There is a increase in demand but there is not a supply problem some is more demand and speculation but the base problem is a dimished dollar.

I once found a soggy dollar floating in a puddle on the side of the street.

I carefully picked it out of the water before it sank to the bottom. It smelled funny after it dried.

This article kind of gets to the basic problems about the population and the paradine we have been living in since the end of ww2. The ratio's are about to flip retirees to workers and as they say in the article. The people in the country and the politions who repersented them were not did not act responsibly to cut back, so nothing was done about it when something could have been (much like global warming). So now there will be a hellish price to pay.

The old understanding that Housing prices going up and the stock market going up in many ways has to do with the population constantly growing with a smaller group at the top of the pyrimid and a wide bottom coming up to increase demand.

Nice graphics and a short article. The implications after the spending spree of the last 8 years are ominious and the implications on the "recovery" or long term outlook of the economey is clear.

http://www.minyanville.com/articles/US- ... from/yahoo

Here's a link to Mike Shedlock's page

http://www.globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

It's a daily read of mine