People have been noticing the decline of the dollar, and there have been loud warnings from Rubin and deLong - and even the IMF and Financial Times.
What's driving this? Is it a short term blip? No, it runs deeper than that, and BopNews is covering why - in American Thermidor
Essentially, America sells investments to the rest of the world - paper - to buy energy. The entire Reaganite economy is centered around creating two separate worlds - one for investment, and one for consumption. The investment world is one which favors the rich, of course, but it also allows the US to buy oil, and keep an oil guzzling and electricity guzzling economy.