Bookmarking this thread and will revisit a year from now.
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– As the dollar will crash, what else (besides gold) to trade our dollars into as protection from this devaluing. EUROS? Chinese RMB?
– In terms of career, the Smart Move is obviously to take a job overseas that pays salary in foreign currency. Then as the dollar falls in value, you get an effective raise as your salary is paid in a currency that is rising against the dollar. A job (paying western scale salary but in RMB) in China is the obvious choice.
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If you really want to downgrade your living standard, sure go to china and be a worker bee there and see how well you get treated. I think most people here have a misconception about opportunities in China. First, the wealth that people associate to seeing here wrto folks from China is the top 1% of the population that has the economic and political clout to do whatever the hell they want, include coming here. They are business owners/factory owners/etc. (BTW: great to be friends with some of these folks, because I never have to buy any kids clothes at Gymboree or BabyGap when your friends are suppliers to those retailers).
There was a time when people moved from here overseas (people of ABC background or from mainland that went over there to start a business), but it’s really too late for this. China has already caught up, and you (especially as a enginerd) really don’t bring any additional value to the table, plus you can’t speak the local language or read or write.
Next, it should be obvious that the RMB is state controlled and pegged to the U.S. dollar (sort of). While it’s no problem to convert usd to RMB, there are limitations on how much you can convert RMB to USD or any other currencies. Without having a shell company, common people can’t convert back masses of RMB to foreign currency.
Did I mention that the european markets aren’t looking too good these days also?
As far as the private sector, American’s will just have to learn to deal with living with less.
