A little Liza for you...

Oh huzzah for long term planning. The dollar hits a new low. And it isn't just supermodels catwalking away from being paid in dollars -- Warren Buffet is downgrading his faith in American cash making a comeback any time soon, too. Via Bloomberg:

Gisele Bundchen wants to remain the world's richest model and is insisting that she be paid in almost any currency but the U.S. dollar.

Like billionaire investors Warren Buffett and Bill Gross, the Brazilian supermodel, who Forbes magazine says earns more than anyone in her industry, is at the top of a growing list of rich people who have concluded that the currency can only depreciate because Americans led by President George W. Bush are living beyond their means.

Even after the dollar lost 34 percent since 2001, the biggest investors and most accurate forecasters say it will weaken further as home sales fall and the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates. The dollar plummeted to its lowest ever last week against the euro, Canadian dollar, Chinese yuan and the cheapest in 26 years against the British pound.

But all is not lost:

"As long as the dollar's decline doesn't trigger inflation, it's a good thing, helping the U.S. economy to stay out of recession," said Robert Mundell, a professor at Columbia University in New York who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 1999.

Let's just all cross our fingers, hope that energy prices stay low for the winter and that food transportation prices don't spike, and go out there and do some shopping for the good of the country. Because, frankly, that's pretty much been the strategery in all circumstances, hasn't it? Good thing we have that whole supply side oil thing under control.  (Froomkin has more.)

At least we're buddy-buddy with France again, since Sarkozy is George Bush's bestest new chum:

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Wednesday accused the United States of standing by as the U.S. dollar falls, warning that risks of an "economic war" in global trade were rising.

I bet George "truth to power" Bush just loved that one. Well, at least we'll all be home for the holidays. Erm...some of us, anyway:

Increasingly, research shows that race has also played a role in who gets sold a subprime loan. Forty-one percent of black home buyers in metro Atlanta earning more than $100,000 a year got a subprime mortgage, compared with 7 percent of whites with the same income.

Subprime loans are about 10 times more likely to fail than prime loans.

"This is a crisis," says William Brennan, director of Atlanta Legal Aid's Home Defense Program for the last 19 years and one of the first consumer advocates to warn Congress of the coming meltdown.

"More than two million subprime mortgages have already failed or will end in foreclosure," says Brennan. "In metro Atlanta, every month thousands of families are losing their homes to foreclosure. On the courthouse steps today, more than 6,000 homeowners were facing foreclosure."

Why are the words hell and handbasket coming to mind? Is it 2009 yet?

PS -- Who says, "Hey, we seem to have a spare pile of date rape drug hanging around. Why don't we fill some tiny children's toy pieces with it? Kids will never swallow those." The stupid...it burns.

(H/T to Mr. ReddHedd.)