Every one of these markets is manipulated and played. We’re not insiders so we’re not privy to why things are happening. Our job is to watch the financial news, where we learn what the next hot investment trend is — then we put our money into that. Then those investments are reduced in value and our money is transferred to those in the know so that they can purchase homes on Long Island and big boats. None of it makes sense. Remember when we were told that the reason oil was going up was because of increased demand, peak oil, or whatever? Now that it’s gone down again we find out the real reason — speculators with tons of money moving the market to make big gains. My guess is that dollar strength is one part of some similar scam that’s being run now. It literally makes ZERO sense. The US government is bailing out corporations left and right, first Bear Stearns and now FNMA and FMAC with billions of nonexistent dollars that they’re printing out of thin air and our currency goes up in value. I’m sure Hanky Panky Bernanke would have a good explanation, probably something about weakening world economies or increased confidence in the US economy. Who knows? Certainly not me. But what I do know is that someone is getting rich off of it.