Roads Less Traveled

I’m talking about the US dollar, which soon will no longer be the world’s reserve currency. It will be replaced by Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), essentially a “basket” of currencies, and the impact on everything you used to take for granted about the USA-our military power, consumer prices, interest rates, housing, food, energy, pensions, health care-in short, almost every material or financial good that is tied to our currency-will be negatively affected. There will come a time in the not too distant future when we’ll look back on the 2000s and 2000 teens as the “good old days” much as Baby Boomers used to think of the 1950s.

Like everyone else, I remember exactly where I was on 9/11. I was in my local gym working out, and the news on the TV was broadcast live above my Stairmaster. At first, I thought it must have been an accident. After all, I reasoned, a bomber had once flown into the Empire State Building by mistake. Then the second plane hit, and the horror of it all struck me like everyone else.

I’m driving down Alaska’s Parks Highway when I see it. “That’s McKinley,” I say, as I pull over for a better view. My mouth is dry. Even though we’re 80 miles away, it looms large in the distance, its great white shoulders hulking up above the horizon and making the world seem small in comparison. Continue reading →