Everyone loves to talk about the dollar these days. Even super models are in on the action. It's THE thing to do.
Mention the dollar at a cocktail party and people will gather around and bob their heads up and down at you as if they know what you're talking about. Even though the dollar's down, the chatter surrounding it is en vogue.
This is how I see things. If you manufacture and sell stuff in dollars, what you sell just got cheaper for many potential buyers out there. This may come at a convenient time considering the growing wealth of many consumers in industrializing nations. The newly rich from Asia and Europe might vacation here more often and start buying products from us other than our treasury bonds. Heck, they might even help us out of our housing mess by buying a few nice vacation homes in warm and sunny places. Will the advent of online shopping enjoy an international growth spurt? Maybe.
It would seem to me that most things are a better buy when they are the same thing, only cheaper. As long as the quality hasn't changed, that's what I'm thinking. In the United States, industrialization came first and then as prices fell, consumerism reached new heights or perhaps better put, "trickled down". Perhaps the falling dollar will help usher in a second wave of global expansion led by a budding international consumer. What we're selling may not only broaden, it may also deepen.