"For all the concern over the $1.6 trillion U.S. budget deficit and record debt load, the dollar is as valuable now as 35 years ago," Bloomberg News asserts. This is just silly. The article bases its assertion on comparing the dollar to "a basket of currencies from the Group of 10 nations." But most Americans, when they go out shopping, aren't trying to buy a basket of currencies. They are trying to buy a house, or a car, or health insurance. If the geniuses at Bloomberg really think 2010 dollars are the same as 1975 dollars, let them all sell their houses for what they would have cost in 1975, and let them all take their salaries in what they would have earned in 1975, and then let them re-write the story based on what they find out.
I don't mean to be overly downbeat about the erosion of the dollar. Certain goods, like computers or color televisions, are less expensive now than they were in the 1970s. But other goods, like an ounce of gold, are five or seven times more expensive now than they were in 1975, as measured in dollars. Thinking about the value of a dollar involves thinking about what you can trade a dollar for. beyond just trading it for some other country's fiat currency.