The last time the dollar took a big slide against the euro non-US webmasters . The problem was that a declining dollar meant despite earning the same, or even more, the currency conversion rates meant they were making less.

The United States has been issuing money like mad. Between 2000 and February of 2006 M3 money supply has increased roughly 4 trillion dollars. Thats right, there is about 4 trillion dollars out there that wasn’t here in 1999!

Remember those all-time low mortgage rates from the last few years? Following the stock market correction the Federal Reserve dropped interest rates making credit dirt cheap. Between that and heavy deficit spending (to the tune of about $2 billion a day since September 2005), US dollars are not in short supply.

This is a very complex issue. Factor in issues including the trade deficit (devaluing the dollar would fix it) and high energy prices (increasing the dollar’s value would push prices down).. everything starts to look like a really crazy circus.

If you do not live in the United States this is an issue you will not ignore. If you’ve been collecting affiliate checks and ad checks in USD for several years you are already well aware of this issue.

If you live in the US, this issue won’t be so visible for awhile outside of gas prices and gold (both of which may come back down in the near term.) I’m not going to turn this into an economics blog, but this is not the last post I will make about this issue. Besides the US dollar you have to factor in your local currency. Countries like the Czech Republic have been experiencing strong currencies recently while other countries such as New Zealand and Iceland have headed in to a crises this year. Thus, the strength or weakness of the US dollar could either be cancelled out or exacerbated.

So will the US dollar move up or down this year? Watch the federal reserve. If the fed decides to pause rate hikes it will probably decline whereas if the continue to raise rates it will increase the dollar’s attractiveness to foreign buyers potentially keeping it strong at least for the mid-term.

At the end of the day, there is little you can do to about the currency values. The only remedy is to increase your own earnings — and thats what this blog is for.