The How to Take Back America Conference held by a group of conservatives this past weekend had more going for it than just Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., calling President Obama "an enemy of humanity." There was also a talk by Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.
During her remarks, Bachmann was back on a favorite subject: The threat of a one-world currency, which would replace the dollar. (Video, via the Washington Independent's David Weigel, who was at the conference and was first on the story, is below.)
"The American people want us to vote for American soveriegnty, even if President Obama's czars want to give it away," Bachmann said, in sort of a perfect synthesis of various conspiracy theories bouncing around on the right. "And they want us to vote for a stable dollar, even if President Obama's policies weaken our dollar to the extent that the international community wants to replace the dollar with an international one-world currency."
Bachmann's been on this particular kick for months now, but it's based on a pretty fundamental misunderstanding. The news story that piqued her interest was a move by countries like China to replace the dollar as the international reserve currency -- the idea of replacing it altogether simply never came up, except in the congresswoman's mind. And the proposal was floated not because of Obama's policies weakening the dollar, but because of general concern about the U.S.' trade and budget deficits and a desire on the part of some countries to increase financial security by making the international reserve currency a combination of various currencies -- like diversifying a stock portfolio.
Salon's Andrew Leonard has had some great coverage on this in How the World Works, which you can read here and here.
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