Your Employer is Killing the Dollar

A terrible jobs report number Friday has the dollar scrambling to see if it can hit record lows against just about every currency in existence. If the world market traded in World of Warcraft gold or Legend of Zelda Rupees, it would probably be down against those currencies as well. Why is this decline in the dollar the fault of your employer? Because the unemployment number is high and companies simply are not spending the cash they have on hand to hire new workers. Corporations are sitting on record piles of cash and show absolutely no sign of doing the right thing and providing jobs for the Americans they seek to make money from. Keep that fact in mind for 2012, when some folks will argue that the way to create new jobs is to cut taxes for businesses. News flash: businesses already have large reserves of cash. Giving them more cash in the form of tax breaks isn't going to help them hire more workers: they already have the cash. They're just not spending it. Come to think of it, when is the last time a CEO was rewarded with a higher stock price after hiring workers? We see it all the time when a company slashes the payroll. The dollar looks to be in trouble next week, as there isn't likely to be any news to counter the bad jobs report for some time. Getting in short might be the way to play that, unless you know something about the economic situation in America that we don't. This comes along with news that the euro is rising amid the theory that the Greeks will get their bailout. If that's true, EUR/USD could be bullish next week. If not, well, it's unlikely that god or Ben Bernanke have any idea what that pair will do.