Following on my last post - why was I trying to change euros to dollars? Because at some point the levy that was holding back the euro tide broke, and the dollar plunged in value. According to Yahoo, it looks like the fall happened over the weekend, when the euro went from 1.29 to 1.31. It went as high as 1.32, but now seems to be falling back slightly. These may not sound like big moves, but when you consider how much money is involved, they have a huge impact. A more colorful description of recent events can be found in the Chicago Tribune, which stated:
Last week, as Americans sat down for Turkey Day, the dollar was getting whacked in thin foreign exchange trading. The holiday is over, but the greenback is still running around with its head cut off. The article is titled "Dollar taking it on chin against euro, pound" (and don't you just love the grammar of that title?) and it basically says 'if you're not worried, you're not paying attention'. The problem is that the fed can't really go two directions at once - lowering interest rates gets the economy moving (theoretically), raising interest rates helps the dollar (because more people want to invest in the US when the return on investment goes up, and they need to buy dollars to do so). So there's a muddle, and meanwhile the dollar sinks and sinks. Bad for some people, good for me.
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