Sell the Dollar: Terror in the Supermarket

So you have all these people in government diddling the damaged economy and poor helpless suckers like myself have no choice but to go along. Well, yeah I'm plenty mad and I'm shouting it from the rooftops but we are essentially powerless.

I go to the grocery store to shop once in a while. I like grocery shopping but my wife doesn't often let me do it. I like grocery shopping because it keeps me grounded. I used to work in a grocery store while I was in college and I find it a much better barometer of the economy than the price of gold, the S&P, the CPI or the other econ indicators.

Food prices are high; there's no doubt about it. To spend more than a $1.00 for one little can of flat anchovies is proof enough. A can of soup costs 2 bucks. Bread is high. Milk is not so bad--dairy farmers are complaining of the low prices they're getting for milk these days. You get a lot of milk for your 3 dollars. But bread!...hell... 3 bucks for a loaf of bread? You need a lot of bread if you have a family. Cheese? That's for rich people unless you can make your own. I splurged (my wife likes it) to buy a little flat of "Brie" (merci beaucoup, Francaises) and goodbye 6 bucks. Cookies? Forget the cookies or bake some of your own. That may be expensive, too, because the price of flour is up. Good news about baking, though; eggs are pretty reasonable since it's become well publicized that they are high in cholesterol. Did you ever check out the price of egg whites, though? You must use vegetable oil for cooking and baking, though. To buy virgin olive oil requires bank financing and haven't you heard? The banks are only loaning dolars to people who have plenty of them. Okay, you're bored, you get the drift, I won't go on.

What I'm getting at is that these people in government are diddling with the dollar and the dollar's not worth much and they know it. Printing money and then throwing it around means it loses value and that you'll have to eat all your "Brie" in the U.S. because you can't afford to eat it in France. The cheap dollar benefits U.S. exports even while it makes life hard for ordinary Americans. Exports usually means jobs in U.S. factories, a thing that is potentially beneficial when the manufacturing is done in the U.S. The Unions are always pointing out the benefits of this and, just to make sure, they urge protectionist measures in Congress. The workers in American factories cheer protectionist legislation but then foreign manufacturers respond in kind and you're driving bald tires because new ones have undergone a 50 percent price increase. But the auto Unions are the greatest beneficiaries of the auto bailouts, of course, getting billions of taxpayer money taken from us and handed over to the lucky group of employed auto workers who have higher wages than most of us and can afford the high prices in grocery stores caused by the cheap dollars.

The cheap dollar is getting cheaper as more phony stimulus money is pumped into the economy. The "recovery" will be a long time getting down to the rest of us but the cheap dollar will help the politicians to keep their jobs, they hope. Juicing the dollar is a lot like juicing steroids in the Olympics. It's alright so long as you don't get caught. Eventually, the self-ordained economic wizards have to do something about dollar steroid abuse because there is a breaking point. The breaking point is now. Things are really awful in the supermarket.