My 2 cents, as someone who works in international trade, up to you if it's really copper or just copper coated zinc.
Actually, in controlling currency by buying up $ (China) and using a dollar denominated benchmark for pricing oil (OPEC - Sweet Crude), the oil rich nations, China, and also Japan (who also bought up $ to control their currency), all three groups are awash in dollars. The budget deficit means that there are more treasury bonds and other $ denominated debt instruments out there. Trade deficit puts $ into importing economies. Fed interest rate changes means printing more $, putting downward pressure on the $'s value.
With all these $'s, gotta buy something, and why not something with a AAA rating with a high return. Sounded good, at the time, and now overseas banks and even provincial governments are stuck holding SIV's. Another choice is to invest in/buy other strong currencies, which often means the Euro (which makes the Euro go up). But the foreign investors/governments have to buy up quietly, because they have too many of these falling $ and can't afford for it to crash, and the Europeans are getting a bit unhappy with their currency being the latest craze.:cheesy:
So in the short term, a crash of the $ is unlikely, because everyone around the world with $ holdings is going to lose. There is a chance of it crashing if a couple other things go drastically wrong with the world economy, or someone panics and drops all their $'s but that's in no one's interest.
In the long term, trust in the $ has taken a big hit, and there is a chance that currency exchange rates will be based on a basket of currencies rather than the $. I'm hoping we don't go to gold, simply because there are other uses for gold besides jewelery and currency. Having the price of electronics and other gold-using manufacturing fluctuating due to currency issues, and using a commodity with large reserves in some rather...unsavory countries...will only exchange one problem for another.
what a concept!
