this story lacks actual evidence of most of what it alleges with other' published statements. what is does do, however, is offer a theory to help point out an issue that was presented a number of years ago in mainstream media, that the dollar was deliberately being devalued by the administration, at that time, it was deduced, for balance of trade and deficit borrowing. it is an important and perhaps vital issue for the country and i hope that more media investigations on this topic will be pursued in the coming weeks.

No one who understands managed news seriously believes American media will ever investigate this issue. Political writer Jerry Policoff, when asked whether this financial crisis had been engineered, responded that the Saudis said as much when Bush begged them to increase oil production: "Their reaction was pretty much that the U.S. should stop undermining the value of its own dollar before asking other countries to take a financial hit on oil." This doesn't make sense? Don't forget these are the same people who saw an easy victory invading Iraq for its oil.

No, this is not good journalism. It's a vaguely entertaining conspiracy theory based on the unabashedly biased view that the Bush administration is deliberately destroying the economy (although the reasons why are a bit fuzzy). To be sure, there's a case to be made that the Bush administration sought to weaken the greenback to make US exports more competitve on the world stage - although the White House and Treasury Department have routinedly denied that. This column, however, fails to cite evidence beyond blind assertions and reports by kindred spirits, which - like this story - appear to be more opinion than substance.

Trying hard to tie in a lot of governments and issues, the piece winds up being fragmented and shallow. For example, while I don't doubt what he says about Wilkinson a bit--certainly we've already seen plenty of his type in this administration--he also just as clearly doesn't have the authority to do this himself. And, while the piece effectively links him to Secretary of the Treasury Paulson, it does not show how Paulson managed to accomplish all this damage either. Scooter Libby showed just how much damage a chief of staff could do. Does he allege Wilkinson did this himself? With Paulson? With Paulson's emergency group? With somebody else? All that is less clear, which weakens the piece considerably.

Shocking but very insightful blog posting about the true reason for the dollars decline.

This is a rare journalistic effort in that it goes behind the obvious and looks "behind the curtain" at forces that drive our economy. As a reporter who often covers business and economic matters, I have been amazed that the dollar's value drop and the factors that have made it obvious that this was going to happen haven't been covered by major media outlets. Kudos to Smirking Chimp for carrying a story that *really* should have been in the Wall Street Journal.