How Is the Dollar Doing So Well in Today’s Economic Recovery?

The question “How’s the Dollar doing?” is one that I hear all of the time from international business professionals, investment bankers, and other movers and shakers in the financial world. In fact, the answer isn’t all that hard to find, but when it comes to implementing change, it can be a little more difficult to pull off. If you are trying to implement financial change in the wake of the mortgage crisis and credit crisis, you need to ask some tough questions to the people who manage your money for you.

How is the Dollar doing? That’s the question, right? Well, not quite yet, actually. The status of the American economy remains pretty low, and many economists have blamed President Obama and his economic team for not restoring American economic growth during the recession that they inherited. Still, the United States is not out of the woods by any stretch. The United States is still a world leader in its market strength, as evidenced by our continued ability to be a major currency.

The question of course is, how will we maintain our economic lead when China and other lower-cost economies catch up? How will we prevent a future where nations with less power become the main currency in the world? The answer may surprise you, but the status of the American dollar is actually stronger than most people think.

The reason is that the world is using the dollar to trade, just like it has done for centuries. This means that the dollar has very little exchange value compared to other currencies in the world. In fact, the dollar is actually losing value against almost everything else, including some of the worst economies in the world. How is the dollar doing so poorly compared to the economic recovery in Europe and Japan? Let me explain.

The European and Japanese economies are both growing at a very strong clip. They have tons of cash, and they have a central bank that is printing money to pay their debts. These two economies have more than enough money, and they do not need to borrow any more from external sources. That means that their national treasuries are growing faster than the U.S. economy, and this is forcing the U.S. government to pump even more dollars into their markets so that interest rates can continue to rise.

The problem is that these countries are using the U.S. money and printing it at a rate far too high compared to the world’s interest rates, and this has forced these currencies to appreciate significantly against the dollar. Now, how’s the dollar doing once these currencies have strengthened against it? It’s doing just fine! That means the U.S. economy has not only regained its economic lead, but it is expected to continue doing so in the future.