I would like operaguy to explain how the US$ dropping against the world's currencies is because: "The Dollar is strong and the rest of the world's currencies are revealing their innate weaknesses." This should be interesting... I would like to bring myself in-line with bungle here. Nobody was bashing America and nobody was complaining about anything that really had to do with living in "socialist" Europe (remember we are talking about before tax prices). I'm not sure why it had to be dragged down that path. My side point was that the low US$ is current US government policy. This is well known. They will not state it explicitly because some Americans won't like it. But, their intention is to try to diminish the negative impact of the massive trade deficit that the US has to deal with by making US goods cheaper to buy. I know it has worked on me because I've bought more photography equipment from the US as a result of it. Of course, the stuff wasn't actually made in the US....