Honest question...If you aren't educated on the topic, how can you tell if there is good analysis or not? (Versus just reading and believing random cranks). Is there any way to test her hypotheses against reality?
Even people who are educated are systematically unable to determine if a macroeconomic analysis is actually good, which is why you have multiple groups of extremely smart economists who completely disagree on what represents a sound basis for macroeconomic theory.
Economics as a field is generally unable to test these theories against reality, probably because any predictive failure can be, and is, written off as “there were confounding variables, but the fundamentals of the theory are still good”.
Her position seems to be that medium term, the dollar is the major currency with the most room to fall. And so over the next few years, it probably will fall the most.
The argument is based on the US having the largest twin deficit -- a huge trade deficit and a huge fiscal deficit.
Medium term, different countries are going to see their trade & fiscal deficits change dramatically.
If your economy runs on oil exports, good luck maintaining a huge trade surplus. Ditto that for almost any commodity for the next couple years. If your economy runs on auto manufacturing, good luck with that -- similarly anything with complex supply chains. This is most emerging countries.
Japan, for example, might not need much stimulus. And the EU might need much more than the US. Who knows right now?
So, yes, her argument is sound if everything stays as it is, and the only thing that changes is how much federal governments print and spend.
But everything is likely to change. A lot. So unless you can predict how these deficits will change, it's not that helpful.
Other thinkers in this space I'd recommend: Raoul Pal: https://twitter.com/RaoulGMI Danielle DiMartino Booth: https://twitter.com/DiMartinoBooth Luke Gromen: https://twitter.com/LukeGromen Brent Johnson: https://twitter.com/SantiagoAuFund Ray Dalio: https://twitter.com/RayDalio
...etc. Search around. Educate yourself!
For all it's faults, ZeroHedge actually gets the mechanics roughly correct (although often doesn't get the interpretation right leading to odd conclusions).
But a lot of the OP is just...not correct (as an example, the OP says that countries were on the gold standard in the 1920/30s and devalued as a response to the crisis...wrong, they were on the gold exchange standard and devaluation wasn't the response, it was suspension of convertibility) and vague (all these posts are very wordy, poorly written, and seem intended to reach a conclusion that was arrived at before any evidence was examined).
I don't know why people are so fascinated with the idea that their currency is worthless. In the US, I assume it is related to the fact that much of America has German roots...where this "currency crash literature" is also a fetish. But if you are worried about inflation, own gold, own inflation linkers, and own good businesses. That is it.
Also, maybe the dollar will fall in value but if you are in the US and have USD liabilities, it makes no difference to you. Stuff that cost $1 will still cost $1.
Are you proposing that the value of USD rises and falls in a geopolitical and macroeconomic vacuum?
The fall and the rise of the USD is very important outside the US. It makes no difference to 95% of people within the US.
Except that their lawn mowers and phones are manufactured overseas. So they are implicitly, if loosely, exposed to forex.
If the swing of the dollar makes French cheese or wine too expensive people will switch. If they need a new refrigerator they have less choice.
Btw, I live somewhere where the currency has depreciated significantly, and we import almost double what the US does...prices go up a little but not much. And for most people, the difference is just zero (the difference for companies is often not zero...companies are often constrained in how they change prices, which is the reason for a lot of the point above, so they end up taking a lot of cost changes to their profit).
I believe that you are incorrect. The US, for example, suspended convertibility at $20/oz, confiscated holdings of gold (!), then changed the price to $35/oz, and resumed convertibility. That's not just suspension of convertibility, it's also devaluation.
And the key point was most certainly not the devaluation. I can only suggest you read more about the Great Depression to understand why (there was the small matter of most banks in the country failing, devaluing your currency does not help with that, suspending convertibility does). Basic. Basic. Basic.
Oh, yeah, you said "read up on the Great Depression". Well, there's rather a lot that could be read on that. You might be a bit more specific, if you wanted to be helpful rather than just smugly condescending.
And so far, you haven't said anything to make it possible to tell whether you're a really knowledgeable guy I should listen to, or whether you're just a loudmouth crackpot who's sure that he's right and everyone else is wrong.
This is known as "critical thinking."
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20180416171148/http://squid314.l...
Another topical example is the WHO in this COVID-19 crisis. The WHO was pretty consistently reporting on what had certainly gone wrong rather than what had likely gone wrong so it was preempted by a bunch of countries closing their borders against the WHO's advice.