“Weak dollar costs U.S. economy its No. 1 spot”

I missed this item last month, but it is a significant story:

The U.S. economy lost the title of “world’s biggest” to the euro zone this week as the value of the dollar slumped in currency markets.

Taking the gross domestic product of both economies in 2007, the combined GDP of the 15 countries which use the euro overtook that of the United States when the European currency surged to a record high of more than $1.56 per euro.

“The curious outcome of breaching this latest milestone is that the size of the euro zone’s annual output has now exceeded that of the U.S.,” the economics department of Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment bank, said in a note to clients.

Of course, the "weak dollar" is not to blame…the weak dollar is just a signal, a symptom of the serious problems facing the U.S. economy: an overactive Federal Reserve, high corporate tax rates, too much litigation, counterproductive capital markets regulations, an overly complicated tax code, runaway borrowing and spending, and failing schools. The good news is that all of these problems are readily fixable, if our political class can transcend the special interests, and our economy is still among the most free and prosperous in the world.