A Weak Dollar: $omething or Nothing?

A weakening dollar has me asking whether it's business as usual or the end of our World Order.

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If each country were a theme park, its currency would be the price of admission. Right now, the dollar’s at a historic low—people are lining up outside, peeking in, and deciding: not worth it.

Tariffs aren’t the issue. Yes, higher prices on imports decrease demand for the dollar, but that’s expected. What caught people off guard was what they saw when they looked inside.

Visitors witnessed our government pledging to ruin the value of our dollar. Our new budget increases the federal deficit 3x by 2035. Investors gawked. Then demanded more. With our debt already growing 3% to our 1.5% income growth, our risk of default is higher. What's almost guaranteed is that any investor will be paid back in less valuable dollars. When we can't grow our income to pay of our debt, we'll simply print the money we owe. For their trouble, we have to pay higher interest payments on future debt. Already, these interest payments are more than our entire military spending.

There are two scenarios where this isn't the biggest deal.

1. We're still fun. As long as investors earn more in U.S. companies than they lose through the falling dollar, they’ll stay. Demand for the dollar continues. Global investment holds.

2. It's relative. We don’t have to be strong—just stronger than the rest. Inflation is global. As long as we outperform other currencies, we stay in the lead.

   
   

We’ve played this game before. Raise the debt ceiling, print more money, and deal with the fallout later. That’s the playbook. The question is whether this moment accelerates the process of losing reserve currency status.

Our money has a fatal flaw baked into it. The dollar is funny money. It's not tied to any scarce resources like gold or silver. Because of this, our politicians print endless money for all their wants and desires. Funny money goes to 0. Always has. Always will. What would help is if our government cared to protect it. Now, in front of the whole world, we emphatically said no. This is why Bitcoin is ripping.

Growth, decline, rebirth. The cycle is clear. We’ve moved from late-stage growth to nationalism with Trump, and now into socialism with Mamdani. The question is: can we do anything about it, or are we just watching history repeat itself from the sidelines?