Why the dollar is strong and why that is a problem

a few familiar descriptions of the dollar: “the cleanest shirt in the laundry basket”, “the least-ugly mug in a beauty contest”, “the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind”. Nobody, it seems, loves the dollar; they just really dislike the alternatives. And that aversion is only growing. The , an index of the dollar against half a dozen major currencies, is at a 20-year high (see chart 1). Among the dirtiest of the dirty linen are sterling, the euro and the yen (see chart 2). Every fresh lurch upwards prompts some big questions. First, what is driving it? Much of the recent rise reflects differences in monetary policy. At the turn of the year, the Federal Reserve became more determined to tackle inflation. A series of interest-rate increases since then, with more expected, has turned the dollar into a high-yielding currency. Lofty interest rates are a draw to global capital, which in turn has pushed up the dollar.