Personally I don't blame people a bit for not knowing that stuff ,it is depressing as hell.Also all the baby boomers are going to retire at pretty much the same time and take their money out of the stock market all at once. I think we should have stayed with the gold standard for money. The way it is now is based on how confident people feel in the countries economy. This is great when things go well but a little bit of infectious panic ,like the current mortgage crisis and things can collapse very very fast to the point you need wheelbarrows full of cash for a loaf of bread. When no one would deal with South Africa they went to a gold standard and even issued gold coins. Suddenly they had no problem whatsover getting people to deal with them. Having all those gold mines was quite helpful.

Canada's dollar is doing so good we have been trying to keep it down in value so our exports don't suffer. The main reason for that is we have a lot of oil. People in the know have started calling currencies supported by oil as petrodollars.