Sometimes I'm amazed at how little I know about international affairs. Is it because I'm American? Are we really that cut off from the rest of the world? Or maybe because I'm just not paying attention?

International currency exchange and valuation is such a foreign concept to me, but here in Dubai it's almost a daily topic.

Seriously.

See the United Arab Emirates dirham is pegged to the dollar at a fixed rate - one dollar to 3.6725 dirhams. Thus every dirham we make here is worth exactly $0.27229408, day in or day out.

That not only makes the exchange rate easy for us Americans who live here, but quite a good deal as our home currency is tanking. For the past year or so the dollar has slipped to record lows, as you probably know. A dollar today will get you 0.68 Euros, 0.48 Pounds or 0.99 Canadian Dollars.

And for all of those residents of Dubai whose home country uses Euros, Pounds, New Zealand dollars, Australian dollars, Canadian dollars - well, they are all making much less money today than last year.

Now you can see why it's a daily topic.

Lately some countries have changed their currency to be pegged to a basket of currencies (see Special Drawing Rights).

But now the rumor in Dubai is that they're just going to revalue the dirham.

It started on Wednesday when ArabianBusiness.com speculated that the UAE central bank would announce a 3-5% revaluation this weekend.

See Sunday and Monday are bank holidays for National Day, and the thought is the revaluation would happen over the weekend as to not cause panic.

The theory is that the new rate will make the dollar worth around 3.5 dirhams.

That means that a dirham would go from $0.27229408 to $0.2857142857 - a gain of $0.0132.

Ooh, a whole cent.

But then think about on a scale of ten-thousand dirhams. That's a gain of $132. Now we're getting somewhere.

Of course, this is all speculation at this point. In fact, I've seen other wild guesses that the UAE will revalue at a higher percent - maybe even 10-20%. Some people think that they'll dump the dollar altogether.

So all we can do is wait.