Today the Dollar Lost and Then Gained the Vast Sum of . . . Half a Cent

I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but—oh, who am I kidding? What’s a blog for if not to beat a few dead horses? You’ve probably already heard that Donald Trump said today that the US is actually in favor of a strong dollar policy, thus ending the Mnuchin crisis of a few hours earlier. The whole world breathed a sigh of relief.

However, I’d like to put this in perspective. Here’s what the dollar/euro exchange rate has looked like over the past few days:

Unbelievable, isn’t it? Mnuchin ran his mouth off and the dollar lost…half a cent. Six hours later Trump set things right, and the value of the dollar settled in at 0.8 euros, a rate that was identical to where it was 24 hours before. We really dodged a bullet, didn’t we?

Look, it’s not a great idea for Treasury secretaries to blab about stuff without thinking through the consequences. But the conventional wisdom is positively cultish in the way it insists on nothing but gnomic utterances from the Fed and the Treasury. On Wednesday the dollar dropped 0.6 percent all on its own. It probably would have done the same thing today, but thanks to the mob mentality of currency traders it only took an hour. So what?

Anyway, the dollar is back up temporarily thanks to Trump, but over the next few days it’s going to do whatever it was going to do anyway. Nothing Mnuchin or Trump said made any actual difference, no matter how many columnists insist otherwise. This episode tells us nothing except that currency traders overreact to news like this in hopes of making an ultra-short-term profit. That’s all.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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