The greenback’s charm

LAST week, at a bank's strategy session ahead of a meeting by the European Central Bank to set interest rates, currency traders weighed up the euro-dollar exchange rate. If the ECB cut interest rates, they decided, the euro would fall, because it would have been pushed by outside pressure and forced to turn a blind eye to inflation. But if the ECB kept interest rates unchanged (as it actually did), traders bet that the euro would still fall, because the bank would be choking European growth. The market, it seems, is so infatuated with the dollar and scornful of the euro that the ECB's policy makes no difference.