Just heard Steve Forbes on CNBC that the Fed must stop "debasing" the dollar. Debasing. What the hell does that mean, anyway? The dollar has no "base" to begin with. So here I go again showing how this line--which is used often by the likes of Forbes, Jim Rogers, Schiff and all the other economic airheads--is a total bunch of crap.
The Fed started really adding reserves (that's Forbes' definition of "debasing") around the time of the Lehman crisis in 2008. Reserve balances then began a meteoric rise, ending up at the current level of just below $3 trillion.
And what happened to the dollar?
It went up.
Take a look at the Fed's
broad trade-weighted dollar index. This tracks the dollar's exchange value against currencies from regions or countries like, the Euro Area, Canada, Japan, Mexico, China, United Kingdom, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Brazil, Switzerland, Thailand, Philippines, Australia, Indonesia, India, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Sweden, Argentina, Venezuela, Chile and Colombia. As you can see, these are lots of countries we do business with.
When the huge increase in Fed activity began (Forbes' "debasing") this index was at 95, roughly. Today it is at 99. That about a 5-percent INCREASE. Forbes and the rest of the crew, like Rogers and Schiff, continue to repeat this dollar debasing line without anyone ever correcting them. Let them stand corrected as of right now!