SFGate: Euro up. Dollar down. U.S. debt through the [over-mortgaged] roof

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Euro up. Dollar down. U.S. debt through the [over-mortgaged] roof

"Hail the conquering euro! Yes, we know - we've used that catch phrase here before and we'll probably have opportunities to revisit it in the future, too. For now, though, it couldn't be more apt. That's because, yesterday, the euro, which is now the national coin of 15 European countries, reached an all-time high in its value against the American dollar. In international trading, one euro reached a value of nearly $1.51 before settling down a fraction of a percentage point lower.

Then there's that pesky fact out there in what a Bush administration minion once famously referred to as the "reality-based community," namely the real world. That fact states rather irrefutably that Bush's war in Iraq has cost the U.S. government 50 to 60 times "more than the Bush administration predicted" it would. On Tuesday, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz took part in a panel discussion at Chatham House, the London-based think tank. He pointed out that Washington's limitless Iraq-war spending "was a central cause of the sub-prime banking crisis threatening the world economy."