Oh, That Unsinkable Dollar!(United States currency)(Brief Article)

While most international currencies have been buffeted about by the world's choppy economic waters, the unsinkable U.S. dollar has just kept on sailing. Oddly enough, finance ministers at the annual IMF- World Bank meeting in Washington this week are likely to view that as something of an embarrassment. Reason: the buck's buoyancy is a reproach to stagnant Japan, slower-growing Europe and troubled developing countries like Turkey and Argentina. Having failed to reform their economies, they've missed the boat to high-speed growth... or any growth at all, in many cases.

Indeed, the dollar's strength seems to know no bounds. It climbed to its highest level in 12 years against currency indexes late last year, then dropped steeply under the threat of a U.S. recession. But since the new year, when Fed chairman Alan ...