But the bad news is that if the dollar tanks the GOP will be blamed, and they deserve alot of the blame, and the GOP will be finished as a polical party. No one is going to vote for the party that put them in the poor house, no one.
I don't know about that. The GOP and politicians in general are pretty good at shifting blame (see Jamie Gorelick), especially with the "new tone in Wahington," where it's clearly big government vs the little people. GWB has done an excellent job of blaming his pathetic economic performance of 2001-2002 on Martha Stewart and 09/11.
The Dollar deserves to "crash," as it has been propped up above its Market value for decades by Europe, Asia, and India.
And the higher that the Dollar is propped up, the cheaper it is for Americans to purchase foreign goods instead of American products.
In a free Market, a nation's currency will adjust based upon its foreign trade surplus or deficit. A nation that exports more than it imports will see its curency rise. Notice however, that China's currency hasn't risen.
And a nation that imports more than it exports will see its currency decline until its trade deficit declines. Notice that the U.S. trade deficit hasn't declined.
So we *aren't* in a free market because the Chinese Yuan hasn't risen and because the U.S. trade deficit hasn't declined.
That means that governments are intervening in the currency market.
China, for instance, is hoarding $500 Billion in U.S. Dollars. India has another $88 Billion. Japan has even more. Europe, more Dollars still.
By hoarding all of those Dollars, they create an artificial shortage of something that is in reality present in abundance: the Dollar.
By creating that artificial shortage, they cause demand for the Dollar to be artificially high. That artificial demand makes the Dollar worth more than what a free market would value it.
That extra value of the Dollar enables Americans to purchase more foreign goods than a free market would normally allow.
Thus, the propped up Dollar serves as a stealth subsidy for all foreign imports.
Killing that foreign subsidy will hardly be a bad thing, as you errroneously claim above.