Google is often able to pay publishers in their choice of the American dollar or a local currency.  Yet that second option is based on the exchange rate, and as an article in the Guardian Unlimited reported, “The dollar edged lower against the euro and a basket of major currencies on Monday as renewed credit market worries reinforced expectations that more Federal Reserve interest rate cuts are imminent.”

So in a very real sense, the tanking U.S. economy is causing publishers to receive less and less money.  And this is having a very real effect; although some people use the money as extra income, others depend on it to support themselves.

Betsy Schiffman uncovered a whole thread’s worth of folks who have, one way or the other, been affected by the dollar’s fall and AdSense.  Also, a full month ago (before many of these problems became worse), Everton Blair wrote, “If I do ever quit my day job and use [the] blog earnings to put food on the table, I might have to move back to America.”

This trend will definitely bear watching, although there’s probably little that the publishers, Google, or anybody else can do about it.