Can someone explain to me why my dollar gets weaker when it is the US that is going into a recession?
Because Canada, China, Japan, most of Europe, Russia, India parts of the Middle East and South America are also going into a recession to varying extents. That's enough countries that basically every country on Earth is dependent on something from them, and the few countries that aren't particularly still depend on exports to those countries. Major importers go into a recession, imports go down, meaning the countries of origin lose money.
The recession has been a massacre in Michigan, we've been verging on a depression since the .com boom - the state never fully recovered from the recession in the early 90's thanks to GM and Ford historically accounting for half of our employment. So far, two LFS have gone out of business in Saginaw County, a third will probably be gone by the end of the year, and a fourth has almost stopped out of state shipments, and is mostly selling sparse locally bred stock. If you want guppies or convicts, you can buy them by the hundred, but anything else and you're a bit out of luck. Soldans has apparently cancelled plans for some new stores, since the locations are back up for lease again.
Edit: The practical upshot, though, is that the surviving stores, especially Aquatic Gardens, are making bank. There's a lot of major collectors in the area, and every office has a big fish tank to be stocked. Things were always tight for the stores with seven stores in town and two more in reasonable driving distance. With things thinning out, the remaining stores have managed to improve their stock. Depending on how much worse things get, we'll see what becomes of that, though.
Sucks that my other one that was pretty good was shut down. .___. For gods sake they replaced it for a dollar store no one goes to.. the lfs use to be popular. Oh! And theres always walmart! 
