Why the strong dollar is worrying US policymakers

Federal Reserve officials have started to speak explicitly about the dollar as a factor that affects net exports, inflation, and growth

In a world of weak domestic demand in many advanced economies and emerging markets, policymakers have been tempted to boost economic growth and employment by going for export led-growth. This requires a weak currency and conventional and unconventional monetary policies to bring about the required depreciation.

Since the beginning of the year, more than 20 central banks around the world have eased monetary policy, following the lead of the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan. In the eurozone, countries on the periphery needed currency weakness to reduce their external deficits and jump-start growth. But the euro weakness triggered by quantitative easing has further boosted Germany's current-account surplus, which was already" a whopping 8% of GDP last year. With external surpluses also rising in other countries of the eurozone core, the monetary union's overall imbalance is large and growing.