BloggingStocks asked Currency Trader Andrew Resnick to make sense of what appears to be a paradox: the biggest financial crisis in the United States since the Great Depression, tons of additional U.S. Government debt, and yet no major decline in the dollar's value.

"The dollar has remained firm because despite the fact that the crisis started here, the dollar remains the world's reserve currency. And during a crisis, investors engage in a flight-to-safety and put money in the reserve currency, the dollar, or in gold," Resnick said. Gold fell $50.60 to $835.90 per ounce Friday afternoon.

Another factor supporting the dollar: investors and traders believe that financial and economic problems are as bad in the United Kingdom and continental Europe as they are in the United States, and they'll have to cut interest rates further, decreasing the attractiveness of the pound and euro, Resnick said.

Meanwhile, the yen is rising against the dollar and other currencies as de-leveraging occurs, Resnick said. Investors who borrowed yen to invest that money abroad in higher-yielding assets are now returning that money, due to a probable global recession.

The United States: many economic problems

As a result, the United States becomes perhaps the first country ever to experience a financial crisis, increase its budget deficit massively, and face a recession (or worse), without having its currency plunge, Resnick said. Further, the dollar's reserve currency status "has saved the nation from an even more devastating economic fate, for now" and the United States "should take full advantage of it to solve its many financial and economic problems," he said.

Resnick said those problems include: eliminating the U.S. budget deficit, expanding the nation's productive capacity, rebuilding its infrastructure, investing in education, eliminating the trade deficit, and increasing its national savings rate. And of course, financial services and banking regulation reform.

During this decade prices of all sorts of assets -- houses, stocks, commodities, private equity holdings -- were driven to very high levels, with defenders of the economy claiming the U.S. economy was sound, Resnick said. "Ask yourself... where are the values of those assets now? And what shape is the nation's productive capacity in?" Resnick said. "In this decade the U.S. economy was never fundamentally sound. It had major structural problems and imbalances."

"The nation has dodged a bullet, for now," Resnick added. "This is our last chance. We have to get these problems corrected."

Forex / Economic Analysis: A compelling and sobering analysis from trader Resnick. But one need not hear his argument to understand the seriousness of the of the nation's situation: just look at the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Moreover, Resnick makes a strong case when he argues that this is the United States' last chance: China and Japan hold more than $1.4 trillion in U.S. bonds. For now, they are willing to rollover that debt and reinvest it in the United States. For now. The United States must eliminate the risk the withdrawal of those funds implies: it must correct its financial and economic problems, starting now.