It’s been a rough day for the world’s reserve currency. The trade-weighted US Dollar Index is off -0.7% today alone, and the currency is off over 2% over the last four trading days alone. The proximate cause is ostensibly today’s abysmal Conference Board Consumer Confidence report, which fell over six points to a YTD low of 95.2 in the largest miss relative to expectations since June 2010. While this figure was a shock for dollar bulls, it merely extends the persistent trend of disappointing US data. To wit, Citigroup’s US Economic Surprise Index dropped to -0.783, the second lowest level since inception in 2000. ... (full story)