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You're ignoring the forex market, according to the most recent Foreign Exchange Committee Volume Survey there was $12,981,915,000,000 of volume in the 21 trading days in April 2007.
http://www.newyorkfed.org/fxc/volume...survey2007.pdf
If you were a foreigner with dollar exposure concerns would it make more sense to hedge or even get net short the dollar in a very liquid market or start buying US companies and real estate just before the US goes into a serious recession?
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Getting something for your dollars is better than getting almost nothing for your dollars. Owning a company or real estate, especially if you try to bet on companies that are unlikely to flat go under in a recession (like the NASDAQ), is better than holding onto dollars or waiting for those dollars to crash in value before unloading them. And trying to sell of dollar holding for Euro or Yen would likely kick off the crash of the dollar.
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How do you consider buying US companies and real estate as “getting out of dollars”, what do you think you will get paid with when you sell them?
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But you can sell them much later, once the situation has stabilized. Again, it's not a matter of making money. It's a matter of stopping bleeding.
The scenario I am describing has largely already happened in the late 70s and early 80s. Remember when everyone was hysterical that foreign companies were buying up American companies and real estate? The Japanese owned skyscrapers, companies, you name it. This happened because: There were a lot of dollars in foreign hands, the dollar was weak internationally, and since the US was already *in* recession, there was little direction to go but up for surviving US companies. Hence foreign investment went through the roof.