Nice rant Ed but what does that have to do with the price of a Euro and the fact that lead has fallen 60%.
Bill: When the EU (minus GB) switched to the Euro about a decade ago, I was in the French islands spending 7.2 francs that I bought for $1.00 USD. The franc converted to Euros at 6.55; the first Euros I bought cost about $.90...and the price escalated over the past years to over $1.50, and now, given the economic discombobulations in Europe and America, the exchange rate is trending lower, seemingly in our favor, or maybe not.
A weak dollar ($1.50 to the Euro) means Americans are employed making products that are bought by EU persons who consider what we make and sell a good buy. The weak dollar means increased exports and a favorable balance of payments; in other words, a surplus of foreign money being earned by American businesses, which translates to expanded plant facilities and increased employment. As the US dollar strengthens our exports will decline, fewer workers in export-oriented industries will earn overtime, and some will become unemployed. So from the standpoint of American industry and American jobs, a weak dollar is a good thing.
Yet there are people, Bill for example, who equate a falling Euro and rising US dollar with selfish greed and unconscionable profits. But whose? Maybe Bill's! You only benefit from a stronger US dollar if you are chaffing at the bit to send your share overseas. For the American worker and American investor, a strong dollar is a bad thing in so far as production decreases and jobs are lost.
Every American has a vested interest in the continued prosperity of his or her employer on many levels; first from pay check to pay check; second, in the expectancy of continued job security; and thirdly, in the need to invest in one's retirement.
The post-WWII boom era is over. It used to be that American industry grew predictably by leaps and bounds while Europe and the rest of the world were emerging from war devastation or agrarian feudalism. The world was our customer because no one else was making anything. But this began to change in the 1960s, and was certified in 1971, when the USA could no longer dictate the price of gold at $35 per ounce. Once gold began to float and foreign currencies sought their own level, America became just another cog in the wheel of the world economy (the dreaded "D" word: globalization). But to the extent that our economy was less controlled than most others, we were more free to innovate and cope with the changes endemic to time marching on. But this is changing...
When I see a poster on a Forum that revolves around a preference for something as luxurious and non-essential as fine old double guns, carping about the "American way promoting greed" and getting his licks in about dreaded lawyers and characterizing a well thought analysis as a "rant"...well, people, it's all over.
Methinks that Bill wouldn't know a Euro if it bit him. And his fixation on a 60% decline in the price of lead: Is he heavily invested in commodities? As to a "rant," it seems to me that preemptively attacking "profits" and "greed" on a double gun Forum is somewhat like the psycho-ink-blot-test, where the patient is shown a nebulous blot of ink and then tells the doctor what ails him. But for most thinking people, without an axe to grind, an ink blot is simply a blot of ink.
For a few disturbed persons the ink blot brings out all their hidden terrors, like fear of profits, and the belief that everyone but themselves being greedy. But isn't buying a foreign gun priced in Euros a certain type of greed. And what kind of dirty profits does Bill have to spend in Europe, when a Remington 870 costs $209.00 at his local big box sporting goods store. Buy American, or buy wherever, and if it costs too much, don't buy.
In the final analysis, the rise and fall of the Euro versus the USD has nothing to do with greed or profits, but is a simply balancing of the books. The Euro has nothing to do with guns made and sold in the USA. If the Bills of this world crave a foreign made gun, originating from a Euro-dollar country, the exchange rate is not going to affect the gun in the country where made (say, Italy).
An Italian $1,000-Euro-gun will still cost $1,000 Euros in Italy, no matter up-and-downs in the exchange rate. So where's the gouge? Bill can still go to Italy and buy his $1,000 Euro gun for $1,000 Euros. It may cost him more US dollars at the current exchange rate to purchase $1,000 Euros to pay for his $1,000 Euro gun. But where's the gouge? Perhaps in Bill's mind. And in the minds of all the wrong-thinking sympaticos and fellow travelers who subscribe to the notion that profits are bad. Check your IRAs and HR-10s. The bad old profits from years of greedy investing are gone. The bubble has popped. Happy now? Or was it just the other guy's profits you were attacking? EDM
