Yesterday, the W.C. Varones blog posted this handy chart of “then and now” pricing provided by the University of Southern Cal in a fundraising newsletter, which shows 1000%+ inflation in prices between 1959 and now.

Then, today, Bloomberg publishes this article in defense of the dollar, calling its weakness “illusory”:

For all the concern over the $1.6 trillion U.S. budget deficit and record debt load, the dollar is as valuable now as 35 years ago.

Measured against a basket of currencies from the Group of 10 nations proportioned by how they trade against each other, the greenback is up about 3 percent since 1975, according to Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Currency Indexes. That was four years after the Bretton Woods agreement, set up in 1944 to link currencies to the price of gold, collapsed. The U.K. pound has dropped 34 percent and the Canadian dollar has fallen 6 percent.

Woohoo! Go, go gadget greenback! No, I don’t think all this inflation happened between 1959 and 1975, and I’m thinking its more likely that the dollar ‘looks’ up in comparison to this basket because they’ve all been sinking together… but I’ll go ‘head and entertain the arguments in the rest of the Bloomberg article, which are:

• Other Group of 10 countries have, historically, perhaps done worse in the last 35 years
• The more the PIIGS stink up the Eurozone, the more people will buy Treasuries
• Timmay insists the US will never lose its Aaa debt rating. Maybe we should start calling him Timmaaay
• Australia, New Zealand and Canada haven’t printed a sufficient quantity of kangaroo or duck dollars to provide a liquid reserve currency

Somehow Bloomberg avoids broaching the subject of the availability of double cheeseburgers for $1, which is probably the only thing I can think of to suggest that the lone buck has a leg to stand on. Their main points – that other countries are doing worse than we are, that Timmaaay will keep up afloat by hook or by crook, or that the most appealing feature of our currency is its liquidity – don’t make me feel particularly warm and fuzzy. And meanwhile, I’m heading out right now to go pick up some $2.79 bread.