Bush's Weak Dollar

[RedEarth]

America’s working families have been squeezed for most of this decade by stagnant wages and diminishing health and retirement benefits. Now they face new economic pressures from rising gasoline, food, heating, and electricity prices. A portion of those higher costs are directly attributable to the weakening of the dollar and the economic policies that have produced a weak dollar.

Since January 2000, the dollar has fallen by 37 percent against the euro, with nearly two-thirds of that decline occurring since January 2006. The dollar has fallen 31 percent against the Canadian dollar, and 17 percent against the British pound.

The fall of the dollar has affected oil prices in two specific ways. First, as the dollar falls against the euro and other major currencies, oil-exporting states have been demanding more dollars per barrel of oil to protect their ability to meet expenses paid in euros and other currencies.

This can be most clearly seen in the price of oil (the spot price for Saudi light crude) as measured in U.S. dollars and euros during the first four years of the current Bush administration. As the dollar weakened, the dollar price of oil increased proportionately.

............

Energy companies are directly benefited by a weak dollar since the value of their domestic reserves increase in proportion to the dollars decline. While the value of most businesses rise and fall in rough proportion to the value of their local currency, oil companies can gain significant value in comparison to other businesses as a result of a devalued currency.

The nation’s largest oil company, Exxon-Mobil, is only one of many examples of how powerful appreciating commodity prices are in determining stock valuations of companies owning substantial reserves of those commodities.

At the beginning of 2001, ExxonMobil shares traded at less than $36 apiece. By early 2008, the share price had jumped to nearly $85. For most of that period (as the chart below demonstrates), the increase in ExxonMobil’s share price matched almost precisely the appreciation in the price of a barrel of crude oil.

The 138 percent appreciation in valuation of ExxonMobil during these seven years was reasonably typical of energy companies in general, but at stark variance with the increase in share prices of other large companies. Case in point: Between January 2001 and January 2008 the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index moved from 1,366 points to 1,378 points—an increase of less than 1 percent—but had energy companies been removed from the S&P index the remainder would have doubtlessly shown a significant decline.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/05/weak_dollar.html

[sinkingfeeling]

1. See, gas is only $2.52 a gallon in 2000 dollars!

[RaVeN_MeaD]

2. that's not so bad

sarcasm

[Warpy]

3. I'd like to know where he got that 37% figure

because the Euro was worth $0.825 in 2000. It is now worth $1.569. In 2001, it was $0.893.

By my math, that's a 56.9% decline in the worth of the dollar since 2001.

However, he's right about the rest of it, especially the S&P without the oil based stocks.

He'd find a similar effect on the Dow, I am certain, plus the decrease in the overall worth of both exchanges due to the decline in the dollar, a steeper decline than he admits.

The stock market crash has happened, in other words. All that's left are the bank failures and the unemployment end game.

Let's hope that the reform that happens this time is permanent.

[truedelphi]

4. Every time the Federal government bails out a failing banking institution

The dollar is deflated, as the oil we buy is purchased on the world market through the Euro standard.

Europeans have seen oil prices rise 200% but here is is about 350% because of the dollar deflating.

And the top CEO's don't care, because they have invested in the Euro and in oil stocks.