Exchange Rates

A Washington Post story story expresses concern over recent exchange rate movements. In addition, Brad DeLong presents Brad Setser's comments on this issue. Here are some plots of exchange rates from the St. Louis Fed, but the graphs do not show the pressures that are building for the dollar to depreciate discussed in Brad's post and also discussed recently by others such as Martin Feldstein (Comments on the Economic Report of the President and Uncle Sam's Bonanza) and Paul Krugman (Will There be a Dollar Crisis?):

Let's start with this graph from the Washington Post showing the recent fall in the dollar:

And, while the data end on April 28, a similar graph for Japan is available from the St. Louis Fed:

Here's a longer view of this and other exchange rate series. Japan is in the upper left corner. China is in the lower right corner, but the constant exchange rate over much of the time period gives that away. The other two are Canada and South Korea:

Click on Fed graphs to enlarge