Who's Afraid of a Falling Dollar?

By Mark Weisbrot, AlterNet
Posted on November 8, 2007, Printed on November 9, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/67307/

What do policy-makers in China, Japan, Argentina, Malaysia, Indonesia, the European Union and many other countries understand that ours don't? It seems they know that if the value of their currencies rises too much, it can hurt their economy. But for a number of reasons it hasn't quite sunk in here.

Which is too bad, because we've lost more than three million manufacturing jobs in the U.S. since 2001, and much if not most of this job loss is due to the dollar being overvalued. This is bad news not only for the people who lost those jobs, but for the tens of millions more whose wages are depressed by the displacement of these workers - and arguably for the nation as a whole, as America's manufacturing base continues its process of "hollowing out."