Dollar Rally Crumbles as Fed Ramps Up Printing Press

[Enivid]

The rally that pushed the dollar to the highest levels since 2006 is in danger of crumbling as the Federal Reserve starts buying Treasuries and ramps up its purchases of mortgage debt, adding to a flood of greenbacks.

“The implications of today’s Fed decision are unambiguous,” currency strategists at Citigroup Inc. wrote in a research report within a half hour of the Fed’s decision yesterday. The dollar “should weaken,” they said.

Fed policy makers said yesterday they plan to buy as much as $300 billion of U.S. government bonds and step up purchases of mortgage bonds, expanding the central bank’s balance sheet by as much as $1.15 trillion. The extra supply of dollars threatens to overwhelm investors just as the budget deficit swells.

The trade-weighted Dollar Index, which tracks the currency’s performance against the euro, yen, pound, Canadian dollar, Swiss franc and Swedish krona, tumbled 2.7 percent to 84.595, its biggest one-day drop since 1971. That pushed its decline to 5.6 percent since reaching 89.62 on March 4, the highest in almost four years.

It fell yesterday by the most in nine years versus the euro, to $1.3474, and traded at $1.3433 as of 6:10 a.m. in London. The dollar dropped today against Japan’s currency to a three-week low of 95.27 yen.

From Bloomberg News.

[FXexpert]

The dollar is seeing sharp drops against most majors right now.