COLUMN-Dollar demise much exaggerated

John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

By John Kemp

LONDON (Reuters) - Perhaps the most surprising development over the last three months has been the surging value of the currency at the heart of the crisis. It is almost as if investors have responded to a fire alarm by running towards the source of the fire.

From a recent low on July 15, the U.S. dollar's trade-weighted value has risen 19 percent. The dollar has been broadly stable against China's yuan (+1 percent) while posting massive gains against the Swiss franc (+20 percent), the euro (+26 percent), the British pound (+35 percent) and the Australian dollar (+52 percent). Only against Japan's yen has the currency slipped marginally (-6 percent).

Since 1997, commentators and policymakers have openly worried about America's gaping trade deficit, resulting dependence on foreign capital inflows, and the risk of a sharp correction in the value of both U.S. government bonds and the currency if investors started to balk at financing the resulting payments gap.

The economy's expansion witnessed a large decline in the dollar's value by almost 40 percent between Feb 2002 and March 2008. As the crisis intensified and the U.S. slipped towards recession, commentators and policymakers raised a renewed alarm about a possible currency collapse.

Instead, the dollar has witnessed its most broad-based and sustained appreciation since the late 1990s. In the last month, the currency has traded at its highest level against the euro for two years.

ADJUSTMENT BY RECESSION

For 10 years, the widening deficit in the current account of the U.S. balance of payments has been the main source of perceived dollar risk. The deficit ballooned from $125 billion in 1996 (1.6 percent of GDP) to $788 billion by 2006 (6.0 percent of GDP).