By promising to suppress dollar-based interest rates well into the future, the Fed is giving investors little reason for faith in the dollar.

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Likewise, Soros, like others, has studied the fate of the dollar in our deficit-ridden, debt-laden economy and decided that the price of gold was going to rise in value as the globe lost more and more faith in the dollar.

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If US politicians continue talking default and behaving irresponsibly on the fiscal side, the likely outcome is that faith in the dollar will erode, says Eliot Kalter, Senior Fellow at the Center for Emerging Market Enterprises at the Fletcher School of Tufts University in Boston.

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The one-to-one link between the peso and the dollar has restored some faith in recent years, removing the thousand-per-cent inflation common before the 1990s, but at the cost of exports which are priced out of their target markets.

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If China or other creditors lose faith in the U.S. dollar, "it could be devastating, " Mr. Durbin said.

WSJ: Durbin Seeks Delay on Spending Cuts

But speculators could suddenly lose faith in the U.S. dollar.

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Because speculators had greater faith in an oil futures contract than they did in the value of a U.S. dollar.

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