The Nikon 17-55 f/2.8 DX lens has gone up by 10 to 20 dollars since I started looking into it a couple months ago.

You pretty much answered your own question didn't you? Future products will be more expensive.

So the admin and the CR guy are all guessing/predicting increases in price for Sony, and Canon, among others, due to the weak US$ and other factors. My question is whether or not we can expect Nikon to increase prices soon as well. On one hand, we've had Nikon do this before to counter a falling yen/US$ ratio, but on the other hand nothing really brings up the ire of consumers more than increasing price. One possibility is increases in price through new and updates products- the D7000 is priced higher than the D90 at release (until you factor currency into account) and many of the updated exotic lenses were pretty much the same design with marginal updates and substantial price increases.

Nikon has also been running a lot of lens rebates- these could allow them to overprice their products, and sell them at "market value" without changing their actual price. To effect a price increase, they just have to stop offering rebates, which won't bother consumers at all (mostly because we have a deadline to work with).

So what do you guys think?