Insignificance

clipped from www.forbes.com President Nixon's Treasury Secretary John Connally once famously quipped to a gathering of European central bankers that "the dollar may be our currency, but it's your problem." Connally got it partially correct. Rather than a problem solely suffered by those outside the U.S., the dollar's debasement on Connally's watch brought Americans great harm too. Devaluationist policies never enhance growth, and just as they created problems for the rest of the world, they similarly gave us the lost decade that was the 1970s. Indeed, what's regularly forgotten is that money is insignificant except as a measurement of value that enables investors to more reliably put capital to work, and producers to exchange goods. Far from wealth itself, money is what enables us to exchange and put value on true wealth.