ONE NICE THING about the falling dollar is that it makes oil cheaper for European and other consumers who are complaining that the rise in their own currencies is hurting their competitiveness. When the euro and the dollar were at about parity, and oil was selling for $40 a barrel, it took E40 to buy a barrel of oil. Now, it takes a mere E30 to purchase the dollars needed to buy that same barrel of oil. A reason for a bit of holiday cheer in the otherwise cheerless economies of euroland.

But for the oil producers, who are paid in dollars that buy fewer pounds for use in London’s posh shops, and fewer euros to fund vacations in the south of France, a weaker dollar is a disaster. Well, not quite a disaster. Oil producers have been compensated for the dollar’s fall with record-high prices, and the OPEC cartel has decided to raise its four-year old target price of $22-$28 per barrel to something like the $32 per barrel that Iran’s petroleum minister, Bijan Namdar Zangeneh, has commended to his counterparts. True, Ali Naimi, Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, told the press in the run-up to the OPEC meeting in Cairo earlier this month, “Our price band is still $22-$28.” And Kuwait’s oil minister, Sheikh Ahmad al-Fahad al-Ahmad al-Sabah, is undoubtedly grateful for allowing him and his family a pleasant stay at London’s Dorchester hotel while American soldiers drove Saddam Hussein out of his country.