International Investing

John Crudele’s theory is that Bernanke is focused on the strength of the USD and using inflation as cover to take rate cuts off the table. Until Americans go on vacation they are typically unaware of shifts in currency strengths. It would take dramatic decline in the strength of the USD for most Americans to [...]

The chairman of the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Nobuo Yamaguchi, yesterday recommended “yen-buying intervention by the Ministry of Finance” to stop the yen’s slide against virtually all other currencies.
Japanese corporations are not normally a hotbed of activism in terms of boosting the yen.
While a lot of people are unhappy with the Bank of [...]

From the WSJ:
Tamas Bencze got a rude surprise when he ripped open his mortgage statement last summer. In just two months, the payment on his three-bedroom home here had jumped 10%.
“My wife looked at our mortgage and asked me, ‘What’s happening?’” he says.
Mr. Bencze got burned playing a risky game: He had taken out a [...]

The pair moved up on hawkish ECB statements. The trend is clear - from the lower left to the upper right.

A report from Dailyfx.com points out:
It is interesting to note that this is the tightest the bands have ever been for EURUSD (since the advent of the euro in 1999). Going back 10 years with synthetic prices, there are only two instances when volatility was this low – December 1996 and August 1998. [...]