aside from some highly visible companies, such as taxing the oil industry, i don't think us government interference will amount to much of a problem. there is some inevitable drift toward socialism, but the real power appears to be in new york, not washington, and the banks and corporate interests should keep president obama from doing anything truly irresponsible.

the us dollar should decline sharply, but against what? the ecb just cut its interest rate to 1%, further weakening the euro. england is arguably in even worse shape than the us, and the japanese economy is about ready to go off a cliff. the resource-rich countries (canada, australia, south africa) have their fortunes tied to commodities, and their currencies should appreciate if oil and gold continue to rise, but they are not on the same scale as the larger economies.

the obvious answer is china, but their government has been just as complicit in rigging their currency as anyone else. they manipulate the price of their currency downward to sell cheap consumer goods, and then they complain that our t-bonds are losing value. ultimately i think the day of reckoning will come when the chinese domestic market is large enough to absorb their poduction, and they no longer have to export to america.

for that reason i keep some cash in fdpix, the falling dollar index, a currency fund constructed to appreciate if the us dollar declines. if we lived in an era of fixed exchange rates we could expect to see a sudden devaluation of the dollar as in 1971. we would wake up one morning and the dollar would be down 30%. but in this day and age, i think we can expect a long, drawn-out decline occurring over months, if not years.