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Ian, I travel all over Europe. I'm aware of exchange rates. I think you have the concept of exchange rates for small sums of money confused with larger scale transfers.
Answer me this.
What does the Saudi bank do with the US currency? With billions of dollars, they get to a point where they can't just exchange it back to Riyal in the US because of the deficit you talk about. Saudis buy less from us than we do from them. So they have more dollars than we can exchange back. (Mind you I'm using the Saudi system as an example, it could just as easily be any country)
It doesn't matter what country we're talking, or how many times the US$ get exchanged, generally speaking, the only place the US$ can be spent in large quantities is in the US. Dollars don't just magically transform into other currencies, or evaporate after being turned into some other money. Eventually someone has a fistload of dollars and they have to come back to the US in exchange for their own currency, or a building, or a car, or a Boeing jet, or they hire US professionals to work for them, or they buy tons of building materials...... and they will be wealthier because of this stuff.
Can you buy a latte in Canada with $2us? Sure, but then the shop owner has to exchange that for Canadian dollars. Try and buy a house in Canada with US$.
You may continue to look at a little piece of the puzzle (currency exchange) and claim it covers everything if you wish I suppose. Your "transfer of wealth" statement still sounds to me like you resent foreigners from having stuff. I still contend it's just the way it goes when we trade dollars for oil, they're going to have our money, we have their oil, it is a trade, we aren't just throwing the money away.
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