Greenback Blues.(The Talk of the Town)(U.S. dollar)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 08-OCT-07

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COPYRIGHT 2007 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Few phrases seem more quaintly outmoded these days than "sound as a dollar." Once the embodiment of American financial strength, the dollar has spent the past five years getting sand kicked in its face by the world's currencies, and in recent weeks, thanks to the Federal Reserve's surprisingly big interest-rate cut, its decline has accelerated. A euro, which you could buy for eighty-six cents in January, 2002, now costs $1.40, and the Canadian loonie, once an easy object of derision, is as valuable as a dollar. In 1922, Ernest Hemingway wrote an article explaining how to live in Paris on a thousand dollars a year. These days, an American in Paris is lucky to spend a thousand dollars a week.

Most Americans, of course, don't worry too much about the price of dinner at Taillevent. But the dollar's latest drop, in...

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