Beauty AND Brains

Insert your own Tom Brady joke here:

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.

Actually, that should read "Americans led by media-darling Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke" as the drop in the dollar is emmenating from the Federal Reserve's long term interest strategy. Buried in the eighth to the bottom paragraph is this though:

The dollar's drop also makes American goods cheaper abroad. U.S. exports were a record $138.2 billion in August, government data show. Net exports added 0.93 percentage point to U.S. gross domestic product last quarter, offsetting a 1.05 percentage point drag from housing, government data show.

Personally, I think it's weasily on the part of the Commerce Department to exclude energy and food from core inflation measurements, but that's a different debate.

There's also an interesting story in there about the rise of sovereign hedge funds---perhaps grist for a good novel with Blackwater playing the role of the new Knights Templar, and Dubai as a post-modern Malta.

Yips! from Robbo: To those of you hanging around waiting for an endorsement of the Llamas for the Weblog Awards by Gisele, forget it. I may want to win, but not so much that I'll take the assist of a Very Brady Soopermodel.