I should probably spend more of that activety in this poor little head composing coherent posts.

To try to whittle it down. The way I see it too many people have benefited from the trade imbalance the U.S. carries to want to see it end. This makes it impossible for the U.S. to act as the global central bank, as the piece says it should. Certainly the Fed can act to strengthen the dollar, and cool inflation now but it is only a temporary reprieve. It comes down to simple supply and demand. The world has shown a willingness to collect lots and lots of dollar based securities, and will continue to do so, but accumulating a swamp of dollars and having them maintain value is an oxymoron, they aren't compatable ends. The longer foriegn currencies are manipulated to mainatin advantageous trade with the U.S., and the longer the dollar is artificially kept strong to keep capital inflows the worse the adjustment that needs to happen will be. What is the real value of the dollar without these supports? Lower than it is now.

Rather than making the dollar strong to make oil cheaper, oil should be valued in something other than dollars. That is the root of the problem. Inflation is harmfully accelerating on a handful of things. I wont enter into the reasonableness of inflation numbers here. We are talking about the runaway out-of control inflation represented by oil, not the undereported high but not out of control inflation like we see for many other consumer goods. So the reasons that runaway inflation exists on those few items should be addressed, it isn't broad based inflation, (heck many of the discussions here talk about the looming deflationary pressures), so in any rate shouldn't be treated like broad based inflation. The U.S. shouldn't be in a position of having to position it's monetary policy to control global inflation irregardless of the effects on it's domestic economy, which is very weak and could just weaken further if the Fed moves as aggresively as it must to contain the cost of oil. And if the U.S. economy weakens further, and further, is that going to strengthen the dollar? Is that going to increase the appearance that the U.S. can honor it's debts? I don't think so.

There must be other tools available to control the cost of oil, such as valuing it in another currency, tools other than manipulating the dollar to the ends it would have to be to accomplish that need. This whole scenario is setting up conflicting forces whithin the global economy, in terms of various currency valuations and the economic performance of differing nations that will be very hard to manage.

O.k. so I got carried away a bit again, and that is even while leaving out much of the obtuse fluff of the first post. But I hope this made my sentiments a bit clearer. Thanks for taking the time to read these though, and I'll try to keep the whole stream of conscinous thing to a minimum.