Chart of the Day: Panicking About the Dollar

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

You know how conservatives don’t really care much about the deficit when a Republican is president, but it becomes something close to Armageddon-in-waiting whenever a Democrat is in the White House? Yesterday Matt Yglesias pointed out that the same thing is true about conservative reaction to the value of the dollar: when it plummets for years at a time under Republicans, they don’t care. But when it so much as wobbles slightly for a few months under a Democrat, suddenly it’s a sign that we’ve lost our moral backbone and our place as leaders of the free world. This is illustrated in text form here and in handy chart form below. For some reason I felt the urge to redraw Matt’s version, but you can see the original here if you like.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate