US economy vs USD ?

My first tutorial about forex (babypips in fact) were explaining that, the better an economy is, the better its currency is.

Times are changing it seems. Take a look at US economy. Good news like Citi is OK and USD is down. Bad news like GM may go bankrupt and USD is up. Nothing to do with IRL economy but only with traders "psychology" and their USD = shelter.

Quite frankly, as a newbie, my only thought about this is that I have to go as far away as I can from fundamental analysis. Technical analysis is no easy thing but nothing compared to second guessing traders herd.

to be honest this is also one of my worries this days though...our economy is crossing through an uncofortable path right now...i just went to the Conference Board website to read the last release and it says that despite the improvement in the Expectations Index this month, consumers in the US remain extremely pessimistic and the possibility that economic growth will improve in the first half of 2009 remains highly unlikely

You're right, things are more and more unpredictable. Economical theories do not fit anymore with most of the real world patterns.
The point is not even to know if things are going the optimistic or the pessimistic way but to realize that, for a while, looking at the real-world indicators won't help guessing forex moves.