The dollar's decline against the euro shows no sign of ending.
Clearly, currency traders have made a long-term judgment about the relative value of the currencies of the Old and New Worlds.
But now there are signs that we're losing some of the most devoted fans of the greenback: drug dealers, Russian oligarchs, and black-market traffickers of all kinds.
James Grant, of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, whose animadversions about the dollar and other subjects are as droll as they are pricey, highlighted the latest indignities to befall the once-mighty dollar in his Dec. 17 issue.
The dollar is popular in the official global economy�"the money that changes hands through computer terminals, checks, and wire transfers.
For American tourists, Chinese smugglers, Ukrainian arms dealers, and African dictators, the dollar has long been the currency of choice.
Citing Federal Reserve estimates, Grant writes that "between 55% and 70% of the $703 billion of U.S. currency outstanding circulates outside the 50 states."
The United States benefits greatly from the fact that the dollar is the world's reserve currency.
Many of the $100 bills circulating throughout the globe are essentially loans that we never have to pay back.
Instead, they stay under mattresses in Bogotá, circulate in Iraq, and are stashed in bank accounts around the world.
But among a subset of global cash connoisseurs, the dollar is losing ground to the euro�"and it has nothing to do with concerns over U.S. multilateralism.
First, the euro zone has been expanding with the addition of new countries and the continued integration between Eastern and Western Europe.
Add in the euro's recent strength against the dollar, and the case for Eastern Europeans and euro-neighbors to use euros becomes more compelling.