In the big picture, we argue that the dollar’s appreciation is part of the third significant dollar rally since the end of Bretton Woods. The first was the Reagan-Volcker dollar rally, spurred by a policy mix of tight monetary and loose fiscal policies. The rally ended with G7 intervention to knock it down in September 1985. After a ten-year bear market, a second dollar rally took place. It can be linked to the tech bubble and the shift to a strong dollar policy.
The carving out of the internet drew capital into the US and induced Americans to keep their savings here. It may or may not have been sufficient to fuel a multi-year dollar advance. Rubin replaced Bentsen at the helm of Treasury and nearly immediately articulated a shift in policy. No longer would the US use the dollar as a trade weapon as previous administrations and officials did. The US would not engineer a weaker dollar to reduce its debt burden. This is the essence of the strong dollar policy. The US first unilaterally disarmed and then succeeded in convincing the G7 and G20 that de-weaponizing the foreign exchange market was the best practice.
However old habits die hard, during the Clinton dollar rally, the euro was born and immediately depreciated. It fell from around $1.19 to below $0.85. They cried, “Quit picking on our euro,” though the market was really accumulating US assets. In October 2000, after Summers replaced Rubin and at the request of Europe, there was coordinated intervention to buy the euro and sell the dollar. The official action and the popping of the tech bubble marked the end of the Clinton dollar rally.
(more…)