Interesting to note that the dollar has declined in tandem with economic policy uncertainty, as measured by the Baker, Bloom & Davis index (and predicted by historical correlations).
Category Archives: exchange rates
Treasury Secretary Designate Yellen on the Dollar
From Reuters today:
“The value of the U.S. dollar and other currencies should be determined by markets. Markets adjust to reflect variations in economic performance and generally facilitate adjustments in the global economy”, Yellen will say, if asked about the incoming administration’s dollar policy, according to the report.
“Is a Dollar Crash Coming?”
That’s the title of a symposium in The International Economy, with Anders Åslund, Scott K.H. Bessent, Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, Jill Carlson, Stephen G. Cecchetti, Menzie D. Chinn, Lorenzo Codogno, Tim Congdon, Marek Dabrowski, Mohamed A. El-Erian, Heiner Flassbeck, Takeshi Fujimaki, Joseph E. Gagnon, James K. Galbraith, James E. Glassman, Michael Hüther, Richard Jerram, Gary N. Kleiman, Anne O. Krueger, Mickey D. Levy, Thomas Mayer, Jim O’Neill, Adam S. Posen, Holger Schmieding, Derek Scissors, Mark Sobel, Makoto Utsumi, and Chen Zhao.
The Strong Dollar Debate, Yet Again
(Somewhat repetitive of a 2007 post…)
Some Asset Market Reactions
Stock, currency and bond markets respond (up, up, yield up) on news of likely Democratic control of the Senate
Treasury’s FX Report – Currency Manipulation versus Currency Misalignment
The Treasury’s semi-annual report designated Switzerland and Vietnam as currency manipulators. Without taking a definitive stand on currency manipulation, I do want to highlight where Vietnam (and Switzerland) stand if evaluated by the Big Mac Parity/Penn Effect:
Figure 1: Log Big Mac dollar price in July 2020 plotted against log 2020 per capita income in 2017 I$. Penn Effect line estimated using regression (red) and 60% prediction interval (gray). Source: Economist, IMF World Economic Outlook October 2020 database, author’s calculations.
Treasury’s Semi-annual Foreign Exchange Report
Debasing the Dollar? (Or Inflation Looming, Again?)
Worried about currency debasement? Do we find out anything from the nominal exchange rate? In a flexible price monetary model (sometimes called the monetarist model of the exchange rate), changes in the money supply should be immediately reflected in the exchange rate.
Stop the Uncertainty!
The economic policy uncertainty, that is (With apologies to Susan Powter). Regardless of where you are on the econo-political spectrum, you should want economic policy uncertainty to be reduced. Remember all those conservative voices in the post-Global Financial Crisis saying policy uncertainty was slowing the economic recovery? Well, today is an opportunity to return considered, coherent, economic policymaking and trade negotiations.
The Net International Investment Position of the US
Since 2016Q4, the Net International Inestment Position of the US has become more negative.