Who Gets Hurt When the Dollar Slides

The dollar is now at a record low against the Euro, down more than 20 percent from its peak in 2002, down so low it’s about equal to a Canadian dollar. What difference does all this make? Roman holidays may be more costly, but how many of us are going to Rome? Canada is pricier but … so what?

The biggest burden isn’t on American tourists. It’s on American consumers.

Put simply: When the dollar drops, imports cost more. Lumber, plywood, and natural gas from Canada. Medical devices from Germany. Machine tools from Italy. When Middle-East and Russian oil is priced in euros rather than dollars – which it surely will be as the dollar continues to slide – our energy bills will be far higher. When China seriously revalues – which it has to do as the dollar drops – every big-box retailer in America will be charging far more.

And plenty of American producers who had kept their prices down for fear of foreign competition, won’t any longer. As imports cost more, there’s less to fear.

The real worry isn’t inflation, as Wall Street thinks. It’s our pocketbooks. The bitter truth is that even as American exports do better when the dollar drops, most Americans get poorer.

Maybe we should get poorer. After all, the dollar’s tanking because we’ve been living beyond our means – borrowing some $2 billion a day from the rest of the world to go on buying from the rest of the world, and pay for some big-ticket items like a huge military. Rack up that much debt, and it’s no wonder our national IOU, called the dollar, is losing credibility.

But not all of us will get our comeuppance. Americans big enough to be able to shift their dollars into other currencies are doing just fine. That includes Wall Street investment houses, corporations with lots of cash, and the very rich.

So who gets hurt as the dollar slides? It won’t be Warren Buffet, who’s already converted more than 20 billion bucks into other currencies. It will be those of us who can’t hedge against the fall, and whose dollars are already stretched to the limit.