I really have to stop reading the discussion threads attached to articles on Yahoo! news. The amount of intolerance, ignorance, and idiocy is infuriating. It's like chasing ambulances - why go out of ones way to be disgusted?
I went off on a bit of a mental tangent tonight and ended up creating this graph. Originally I was looking at the exchange rates between the Canadian dollar and the US dollar for the sake of our trip at http://www.oanda.com. Then I discovered I could get historical exchange rate information and created this graph showing the values in US dollars of Euros (EUR), the Canadian dollar (CAD), British pounds (GBP, divided by two), and Swiss francs (CHF). Interesting that the general trend on all of these currencies was significantly downward until late 2000 (indicating a strengthening US dollar), leveling off throughout most of 2001 (indicating a cessation in relative growth of the US economy) and then climbing exponentially after late 2001 (indicating the US dollar losing value with increacing speed).