The dollar is on a free fall. It used to take 85 cents of a dollar to buy a euro. Now Americans have to cough up 1.45 dollars to buy one euro. For Europeans, the US now is a bargain. For Americans coming to Europe, it is becoming horrendously expensive, especially in London, America's favorite foreign city, with the pound at an all time high as well.
At this point I think it´s fair to ask how can the US be a global superpower when its citizens can't afford leaving their home? While many in the US think that devaluation is good because it helps exporters, my view is that if you can make a decent living with a very strong currency you are in a much better position than if you need a weak one, because your companies are more competitive, more automated, more productive, and you can afford buying other companies around the world. To seek protection behind a weak currency is not the strategy of a superpower, if anything it is the strategy of a wannabe power like China.
Having said that, the US is the US, the number one economy in the world. When George W. Bush announced that he was going to invade Iraq I thought that this go-it-alone foreign policy was going to bring tremendous economic hardship to America and sold my dollars, moving my savings into Euros. Now, however, as a Clinton victory seems to be on the horizon, I think that the collapse of the dollar may be coming to an end.
For the US to have a decent currency again the country needs to go back to the balanced budgets of the Clinton era. Should that happen the dollar should recover to close to parity with the euro again. Military adventurism and absurd overreaction to minor international threats have made America the world's largest debtor by far. Spending half of the world's military expenditures and going around the world begging (or printing papers and hoping that others will take them) is a foolish strategy that has to come to an end. The good news for the depressed dollar is that the Bush era is coming to an end.