WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — It’s a story that’s starting to pop up in financial circles: the U.S. dollar is so strong that it’s driving down prices on a range of goods that Americans like to buy, and in turn putting a ceiling on inflation.

The only problem with the story is that it’s not really true, according to analysis from Omair Sharif, a director at Newedge USA.

For sure, the dollar DXY, +0.31%  , as measured by the dollar index, has gone up by nearly 19% over seven months. That’s the sixth largest gain in any seven-month period going back to 1973.

The thing is, the dollar index is measured against a basket of six currencies including the euro and the Japanese yen.

If you look at the stuff Americans buy, they’re from countries that aren’t represented in the dollar index — mostly China, but also Mexico, India, Vietnam and Israel.

None of these nation’s currencies are in the dollar index. Almost 80% of U.S. goods imports, excluding autos, come from countries that aren’t in the dollar index, he says.

A better measure, what the Fed calls its “other important trading partners” index, has climbed just 7% over the same seven months. That’s a solid gain, but historically an unremarkable one, Sharif says.

So what’s explaining the recent sharp slide in import prices?

Import prices have collapsed by 5.5% year-over-year, and even excluding petroleum, import prices haven’t grown at all over the past year, according to the latest Labor Department data.

A Wichita Falls man made news last week when he was arrested while trying to pay his property taxes.

www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2015/02/03/texas-man-arrested-after-attempt-to-pay-taxes-with-dollar-bills/

Up to 10 million gallons (38 million liters) of crude oil from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill has settled at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, where it is threatening wildlife and marine ecosystems, according to a new study.

The finding helps solve the mystery of where the «missing» oil from the spill landed. Its location had eluded both the U.S. government and BP cleanup crews after the April 2010 disaster that caused about 200 million gallons (757 million liters) of crude oil to leak into the Gulf.
«This is going to affect the Gulf for years to come,» Jeff Chanton, the study's lead researcher and a professor of chemical oceanography at Florida State University, said in a statement. «Fish will likely ingest contaminants because worms ingest the sediment, and fish eat the worms. It's a conduit for contamination into the food web.» 

The researchers took 62 sediment cores from an area encompassing 9,266 square miles (24,000 square kilometers) around the site of the Deepwater Horizon spill. Unlike other sediment on the ocean floor, oil does not contain any carbon-14, a radioactive isotope. Therefore, sediment samples without carbon-14 indicate that oil is present, Chanton said.

The scientists avoided areas with natural oil seeps, features in which oil slowly leaks onto the ocean floor through a series of cracks. In these areas, the sediment cores would have a lack of carbon-14 throughout the sample. In areas that don't normally have oil, «the oil is just in the surficial layer, like in that 0 to 1 centimeter [0 to 0.39 inches]» interval," Chanton told Live Science.

Объем резервов снизится до «неприличных» $100 млрд к началу 2017 года, если ситуация в экономике не ухудшится

Международные резервы России снизятся до «разумного» минимума к концу 2016-го или началу 2017 года, говорится в аналитической записке исследовательской компании Capital Economics. 

По мнению аналитиков, допустимым минимумом, который позволит правительству проводить выплаты по краткосрочным внешним долгам, является величина в $100 млрд. 

«Столкнувшись с продолжающимся оттоком капитала, российские власти имеют два варианта в этом году — сдерживать внутренний спрос, чтобы свести баланс текущего счета, либо истощать резервы с целью закрыть дыру в платежном балансе», — говорится в обзоре.
В прошлом году власти РФ пытались делать и то, и другое, отмечают авторы. Если тренд продолжится, а ситуация с конфликтом на Украине и нефтяными ценами не изменится, то резервы снизятся до $100 млрд примерно к концу следующего года. Прогноз аналитиков Capital Economics приведен на графике. 

С начала прошлого года по середину января 2015 года золотовалютные резервы страны снизились с $510 млрд до $379 млрд, что является минимумом с марта 2009 года. В международные резервы России входят валютные резервы ($334 млрд), включая средства Резервного фонда и Фонда национального благосостояния ($165 млрд), а также монетарное золото ($45 млрд).