Should I take my bank account and invest it in a foreign currency?

Okay, if you've been following the news you might now that the U.S. dollar is losing value on the world market. *Fast.* It's lost so much value that the Us $ is worth less than a canadian $ and dropping fast... http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071019.wdollarhigh1019/BNStory/Front All this has me in a sweat. Should I close out my modest bank account (or at least take most of it) and invest in a foreign currency or something else stable before the dollar is devalued so badly my account is technically worthless? Should I buy things like food/clothes/basic supplies in anticipation of a crash? Whatever I do I CAN'T simply stand and hope it'll work out. By all signs it's too late for that. Any money-savvy people have some advice here? The sooner the better?

Public Comments

1. Definitely do something, the $US is dropping drastically, by 2008, an Australian dollar will be worth a $US, later on, a New Zealand Dollar will be worth more!!, and the New Zealand economy is a lot smaller compared to the US!!!!, do something! and fast!!!
2. Monday morning we will all know for sure.Every ones portfolio took a hit Friday. Investing a portion of your money in Euro's is not a bad idea better safe than sorry. I had the opportunity to buy them when I lived in Finland and the EU was just a concept. 1991 Everyone said this is impossible! It will never work! We won't join! AAH but they did. Valuable lesson learned I could have bought Euros at around a few cents...but no stupid me.Also when somebody tells you this or that WILL NEVER HAPPEN my experiences in life has been it almost always does. Don't panic yet...although you have in my opinion to be concerned, but remember, all these people and companies overseas and nobody wants the weak dollar so they start "dumping" them means people no longer have faith in the dollar...if you have no faith in the dollar then it becomes worthless.
3. Ever heard the expression "buy low, sell high"? What you would essentially be doing is "selling low, buying high". You would set yourself up to lose a substantial amount of money. The US economy is not going to crash.
4. Sounds simple doesn't it. The difficulty is to find the best cash to convert to. You have to find the one that is increasing in value, and time a withdrawal of that cash before it falls exchanging to another country's cash which is starting to rise. Its a guessing game and hard to play. There are costs involved traveling the market, and you would be lucky not to hit a bad one some time. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
5. Currency speculation is very risky. If you don't need near-term access to your savings, consider some mutual funds. You can diversify your investments and gain from the weak dollar by investing a portion in an international stock fund.
6. Yes. Open a brokerage account at Zecco and buy the ETF FXE. You don't need to buy food, clothes and basic supplies. The USD is losing value but it's not going to crash all the way down to $0.49 USD = $1.00 EUR