Hadn't heard numbers associated with the situation, yet, but I'm not surprised. Here's the way I see it: The dollar's exchange rate with other national currencies isn't nearly as important as the amount of the single most critical commodity it will buy.

"Currency" (as I learned from Neal Stephenson) started out meaning the freshness of the news about what your scrip could buy of whatever commodity it was backed up with -- that is, literal currency. Now, everyone can be almost instantaneously current, but money still has a commodity standard. Used to be "precious" metals... let's face it, that's almost silly, in spite of the centuries of custom behind assigning arbitrary worth to something pretty. Now, it's the lifeblood of technological society, and it's not sitting in a treasury somewhere, it's being consumed at a frightening rate.

Got what I'm going for yet? The price of crude oil. Or, to turn it around, the amount of oil a dollar can be exchanged for; i.e, the dollar's true worth. It's nearly half what it was, not all that damn long ago. Let's be generous and call it a loss of 40%, not 8% or 9%.

Thing is, we all knew that was going to happen, maybe within our lifetimes, for one reason or another; more likely, a combination of factors, as is playing out now. Finite supply, exponentially rising consumption, and geopoli**** (oops, almost slipped). Knowing it was coming didn't make it any more possible for us, down here in the trenches, to stop it happening.

Most we can hope for is, the crash doesn't come before there are alternative power supplies worth plugging into. With electricity, the rest can sort itself out.

Ever read Lucifer's Hammer?