Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, started 2010 off by devaluing the Venezuelan bolivar by 50% from 4.3 per dollar from 2.15 per dollar, along with several other silly little limits.  This is continuing the theme of currency devaluations from late 2008 and 2009.  But the evaporation of currency is not only limited to third world [...]

Many people believe that the exchange rate regime (i.e. the monetary policy regime) of each country is its own sovereign choice.
In the Great Depression, we saw the harmful effects of the exchange rate mercantalism that is feasible with fiat money. This was a key motivation for Keynes and others in their design of the post-war [...]

“In my view … it is impossible to understand this crisis without reference to the global imbalances in trade and capital flows that began in the latter half of the 1990s.” Bernanke (2009)
Executive Summary

Compared with the average quarterly value of GDP in 2007-08, the first two quarters of 2009 are down in nominal terms to [...]

On 3 March 2009 in the space of a few hours the Armenian dram evaporated from about 300 per dollar to about 400 per dollar and 275,000 drams per ounce of gold to approximately 365,000 drams per ounce of gold.  This rapid 30% currency poofing is like when the Kazakhstan currency went poof but without the [...]