Funny then that our trade balance fell 16 billion dollars last month. 

And other countries are jumping on this bandwagon as well, but just the small ones like China.

no, it's because foreign economies are weakening at the same or faster pace than ours.  If we were buying less foreign products, the trade balance would have gone in the opposite direction.

Doesn't hurt that, like it or not we are also still the preferred currency of the world. When a foreign currency is measured against the USD to determine it's value, printing more of it is less than helpful. When we are measured, by and large, against our own currency, it wouldn't be nearly as detrimental. It's the old golden rule. He who has the gold makes the rules. No telling if that will remain this way for life. But for the time being, as long as we are preferred currency number 1, we can keep the printing press hot.

AC

AC,

Good to see you back on the board.

Printing money won’t hurt us as long as other counties have similar policies, luckily they do.

Here is a good article concerning monetary policy during the years of the gold standard.

http://www.econ.cam.ac.uk/faculty/meissner/gold_oeeh.pdf

Thanks Mike, good to be back around. Took a little time off, left my previous employer, just now getting back into the swing.

AC

If I'm not mistaken---a lot of other countries that the US competes with on the global level are socialist based---printing money not much of an issue when the govt. owns the wheat fields, banks, airlines (Quantas), etc.

We're not. We've spent ourselves into a black hole and the MAN is simply just buying time trying to keep the massive consumer spending machine afloat that was built over the last 8 years.

The other countries can't just print more money. They spent all of their office supply budgets on US Powerball tickets and have nothing left for paper.  And by Powerball Tickets I mean the gamble their taking by buying our worthless US treasuries.

I would watch out for the Euro it could be the next global currency.  American arrogance will be the reason the U.S. currency fails.  The more currency you put in to circulation the weaker the currency becomes.  Give it a few more years; if America remains as arrogant as always it could come back to haunt us and there will be a new "World Order" with the Euro leading the way.

In the 1990's Japan threw money at the economy and financial structure and even dropped the Int rate down to "0"% and it did not help.  All it did was prolong there economic slump and recovery. The feds need to stay out of it and let the cycle run it's course.  A couple of years and the economy will recover.

One thing the feds really need to do is reinstate the Bank regulation Act and keep them out of Wall Street.  That was a major piece of the puzzle that caused this mess.

First of all, a lot of our "money printing" is being directed towards assets as opposed to stimulus/kicker type giveaways.  sure the Fed needs money to buy MBS, but don't forget they now own MBS at perhaps the peak of it's quality vs. spread.

Second of all, both left and right leaning economists who pride themselves on things like "the ultimate future" and "winning the nobel prize" agree that quantitative easing is the order of the day.  This isn't about perpetuating some kind of wreckless economic gluttony, but rather the last ditch efforts to save a critically ill patient.

Third, there are ways we are similar and disimilar to depressionistic Japan.  Their business structures were fundamentally different than ours and our "phasing in" of action steps has been different in both type and speed.  So the results, in some ways may be similar, but in others, by virtue of the different frond end variables, should be different. 

Jeez Matt. Serious answer to an easy question. Original question was "are other countries just stupid". Yes.

You could have saved all that hot air.

He's too fancy for a simple yes! By the way Matt, speaking of "buying assets" as opposed to "kicker type giveaways", I just had a brilliant idea. Maybe Fannie/Freddie can start giving away toasters to purchasers of MBS. That should get us to our rightful 4.5% home soon. Or is it 4.0%? What the heck, I'll beat the pols to the punch "Rah rah rah, we need 3.5% interest rates, that's whats gonna get us out of this mess! Antonio for governor! 3.5% No Doc's for All!

AC

AC,

I think they looked at giving away toasters but there was a "buy American" clause in the bailout money and they couldn't find an American made toaster.

And for my 2 cents, I don't think we need no doc 3.5's.  No Appraisal 3.5's is what we need.