The ongoing economic troubles have taken their toll on the dollar as investors worry about the stability of the currency and the possibility of inflation. However, the conditions that spell tough times for the dollar have also set the groundwork for the meteoric rise of the value of gold, which today reached an all-time high of $1,069.70 an ounce in New York, surpassing the record set on October 8 of this year.
According to analysts, gold is on the way to its ninth straight annual gain, its value having increased 20 percent this year alone. However, the dollar has plummeted 6.8 …read more

Reports of a quicker global economic recovery recently began to turn investors away from the dollar and toward other riskier assets, such as stocks, or toward safer investments, such as gold. However, new reports have refuted the idea that the global economic recovery will come swiftly, setting the stage for the dollar’s rebound as an investor’s safe haven.
 
Plenty of important financial events will occur next week, such as a Federal Reserve monetary policy meeting, the release of U.S. housing data, and a Group of 20 gathering. These events may compound the evidence required for investors to begin to take stock …read more

If you have invested any money in gold, you may be jumping for joy right now as the price of gold has climbed to an all-time high on Wednesday. Whereas the previous high for gold was set on March 18, 2008, at $1,003.20 an ounce, gold is now worth $1,020.20 an ounce due to a sagging dollar and concerns about inflation.
 
The dollar, however, has fallen to a one-year low thanks to increased optimism in global economic recovery and many investors’ desire to acquire riskier assets, such as stocks. According to most analysts, the weakness of the dollar is the main …read more

Few restaurants are quite as closely associated to America as McDonald’s, but interestingly enough, McDonald’s is currently thriving much more in other parts of the world. What’s more, McDonald’s has reported that growth continues to slow in the United States, perhaps signaling a shift in attention for the restaurant chain.
 
Unfortunately for McDonald’s, overall sales were down 0.4 percent in the month of May, mostly attributable to the strengthening dollar. However, U.S. stores have seen a general decline in growth, with May of last year bringing in a 4.3 percent increase in sales while this year, sales only increased 2.8 percent. …read more

Depending on where your investments lie, you may or may not be upset by the news: although gold futures have dropped 2 percent today, lower-than-expected job losses have propelled the dollar upwards. Traditionally, the value of gold increases whenever the dollar loses value as investors look for a safer place to invest their money, but this development shows that the opposite holds true as well.
According to a recent report by the Labor Department, applications for unemployment insurance have finally begun to slow down, showing their first decline in numbers in a long while. Analysts seem to agree that employers are …read more

Just when we were getting used to the weak dollar, the greenback has hit a little bit of a recovery. According to the FT, it may well last a while. The Economist’s Big Mac index suggests it was overdue anyway.

The dollar’s day may well be over, at least as the sole refuge in hard economic times. As discussed in this article in the Financial Times, the dollar has been the currency of choice when times get tough for over fifty years, due in large part to the size of the US market and the strength of the financial sector. Now that financial sector is weak, and the strong Euro is quickly supplanting the dollar for major international transactions (as well as Giselle Bündchen photo shoots).
Now, the Euro has been increasingly served as an alternate currency in international transactions over …read more

The dollar’s weakness has been a very big story this year, and one which I’ve followed with keen interest. On one hand, as a fairly frequent traveller, the high euro has made those trips much more expensive. On the other hand, as an attorney who charges fees in dollars, my fees have become more reasonable over the past year, which I suppose should help my business (at the same time making my home market less attractive). The change over the last year is very evident when you look at this chart from indexmundi.
I’m not much of a pop culture …read more