Below I have plotted the trend in the amount of money earned from the average license, measured in real dollar terms from 2003 through 2009.

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During this dreary ten year stretch stocks have essentially gone nowhere in nominal terms and, adjusting for inflation, are actually down big in real dollar terms.

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Overall, the cost of electricity, which declined (in real dollar terms) for the last two decades of the 20th century, has been relentlessly tracking up since 2001.

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Yet beneath all that volatility lies a haunting and inexorable truth: "In real-dollar terms, paper pricing basically goes down" over the long haul, says Georgia Pacific President Lee Thomas .

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"Starting salaries do not tell you a whole lot, but there is a real divergence in dollar terms as you go over the course of a career, " says Al Lee, director of quantitative analysis at PayScale.com.

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Since 2005, when China started de-pegging gradually from the dollar, the yuan has appreciated around 25% in nominal terms and about 50% in real terms relative to the dollar, according to a report by The Economist.

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In dollar terms, real PCE in March was right in line with very strong expectations.

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The renminbi has appreciated by 9.3 percent in nominal terms and 12.6 percent in real terms against the dollar since June 2010.

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For two, as evidenced by gold's tripling in value vs. the dollar since 1998, investors in real terms are much worse off relative to where they were previously.

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In February, the most recent month for which trade data are available, the dollar was 4.5% cheaper in real terms than a year earlier.

ECONOMIST: Currencies

It's been offering a package to bondholders that would, in real terms, give back only ten cents on the dollar.

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During the bad decades for the real economy, the 1970s and the 2000s, the value of the dollar in terms of gold fell (by 95% and 74%, respectively).

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Andy Xie, an economist at Morgan Stanley, calculates that, in real terms, the yuan has risen by 40-50% against both the dollar and the euro since 1993.

ECONOMIST: China's economy

With a fiat dollar, it is impossible for A and B to know exactly what, in terms of real value, will be repaid.

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