It's an interesting take on things, but, the value of the American dollar has gone down drastically over the past 10 years. In fact, the American dollar has dropped by more than 75% of it's original value on the world market in the past 30 years. You might or might not remember that once upon a time gas was .96$/gallon. But as the price of the American dollar dropped, all we noticed is that the price of everything else went up. If you think about it for a second, when the value of currency decreases, foreign produced goods will increase in value ,hence gas prices and commodities that are imported (pretty much everything now a days) will be worth more. The explanation behind this is that we are printing more money to pay off our foreign debts. When you see that gas prices decrease drastically (like the 40 cent drop per gallon recently), you know the American dollar is increasing in value. So its kind of like a calculator to see the status of our country in a way. And when prices go to 6$/gallon (we are all crossing our fingers that this wont happen) , you will know that our economy is screwed.