This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Wednesday, November 18th, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The dollar is weak and all claims to the contrary aside.

The U.S. is not serious about pursuing a strong

dollar policy. Cato Institute Senior Fellow Jerry Odriscoll evaluates the President's

visit to China and the dressing down of Obama's policies toward the dollar.

The advance work doesn't seem to have been done very well because to have a Chinese bureaucrat denounce the policies of

his administration while he's traveling to and in China is I think a slap in the face of the president in a most un-Asian

on Chinese way which to me indicates the degree of concern and impatience with what they see as justifiably

profligate U.S. economic policy. So I think it was a very loud message and it really indicates a weakness on the part of this administration

and the U.S. on the global scene.

Why are we on the cusp of a new dollar crisis?

Well, we're in a cuss because I don't think it's a full-blown crisis, but it's looming and it's really part of a series of rolling crises that began in the 60s with the

Lyndon Johnson guns and butter policy of spending without being able to finance it properly and continued

under the next administration and then all through the 1970s until we finally

came to a head under the Carter administration and Carter was forced to

appoint Paul Volker a sound money conservative Democrat to head the Fed and

Volker tightened in the face of international pressure tighten monetary policy

and which led to a major recession.

The election of Reagan as president and Reagan supported

Volker kept him on reappointed him and out of the Reagan fiscal policy and the

Volker monetary policy we got we got a great year of prosperity and the restoration of the dollar on the global

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