Ok,

This is a 5 year Euro to USD graph :



GBP x USD




This one is important to me since I live in Brazil :



How does this devaluation affects you ? Did you change any consumer habit ?

If you live in USA, can you tell me something about Public Services in relation to Taxes Paid during this period ? Is it harder to buy or do something due to this devaluation ?

It'll be interesting to see where things stand 6-12 months from now. There are a bunch of reasons why the cost of living hasnt really risen that much recently.

- real world prices tend to be sticky. that is, they resist change to a greater extent than the currency markets do. There are exceptions like gas, which can change pretty much daily, but a restaurant is not going to change its prices and print new menus very easily. A big portion of the currency dip has come since the recent rate cut a month ago. More cuts are expected, so maybe there will be noticeable changes later.

- China's currency remains tied to the US, which keeps the price of all those goods imported from china effectively the same. As a secondary effect, in a lot of areas like plastics and semiconductors this means other exporters like Korea etc, also have to keep prices low in order to remain competitive with the Chinese.

- I also read an article in the WSJ that was talking about a recent poll that showed that foreign exporters are mostly cutting their profit margins in order to maintain market share. They figure its in their best interests to keep the american market robust.

There was talk a little more than a year ago about China considering moving from being tied to the USD to pegging its currency to a diversified basket of currencies. That, and further depreciation to the point where keeping export prices low goes from cutting profit margins to making them negative, could make inflation a lot more serious. Not at the moment though.

It's really freaking irritating and I think you fat american bastards need to go out and get some extra jobs or something to get the economy going.

I'm going on vacation in a few weeks and when I withdrew $2000 for pocket money I got only ~13000k in Swede-money. A few years back I would have gotten >16000. So basically lazy americans cost me almost $500, and that's just for this withdrawl!

US doesn't care about the worth of it's money... If they need more money, they'll just print it.
Everyone knows that Fort Knox is empty....