Thanks cutworm. This is a great point. We are at the lowest level in 6 months.

https://www.investing.com/currencies/us-dollar-index

            Dollar Index                        96.095                        -0.312                        -0.32%        

The US$ is much stronger against the Brazilian Real than it was in 2012.The USD BRL made a new high at the end of November and has since retraced a little. Strengthening of the real would be bullish beans. Will it happen? 

https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/usd-brl

Did the Fed inject huge amounts of digital money into the big central banks at yr end over the repo crisis

I forget the actual months and time frame

Would that excessive QE which wasn't QE have anything to do with excessive digital money in a short time and the system[what ever that is]could not absorb the money, thus demand for USD fell just a tiny bit

armstrong says the repo thing is Not the same as QE.  

it is not a matter of the fed wanting to buy bonds to support the bond market. 

it is a matter of banks not trusting each other when it comes to overnight loans from one bank to another.  so they all turn to the fed to get their cash.  the big issue?... why do banks not trust each other?  banks in europe have been struggling for a decade.  

think of "its a wonderful life",  and the bank run.  but instead of citizens rushing to the bank, ... banks are rushing to the fed.  

this is wierd... after 10 years of a growing economy,  some banks are doing massive layoffs (while the economy is still growing, and market is still going up).  

The banks don't trust each other

Which seems rather obvious and brings to mind the last bank failure which {I think] was the start of the last financial crisis

After the fact: We were told the banks bundled money into tranches and sold it as high grade investment. I think a lot of those tranches had low quality home mortgages, bundled with those tranches, which were sold and bundled. Once the home owners had to re-fi at much higher int rates they simply could not pay and walked away from the debt. Thus we had a bank failure, as the banks now owned multiple homes they had foreclosed, and no revenue stream from mortgage payments. The weakest bank [Lehman???] [not sure which one failed] and then the tranches were revealed as worth much less than investors were told. This brought on the financial crisis which we were told was the failure of the housing market. Actually, I think the blame should be more on  the banks who loaned money to people who they knew would not be able to pay. However, the banks and loan officers were making so much money selling investment tranches they just kept on bundling and selling investment tranches, which paid the big money

So was it the banks who sold the investment tranches or the home buyers who were at fault???

So it is today, it seems to me, I agree, no bank will trust another for fear of another bank failure 

Have I got that more or less correct

Please correct me, as this repo thing is something new to me

Something I may not have correct, but I think some in lower level decision making tried to warn upper management to back off the home loan portfolio but the money seemed so easy they stayed with it until it was too late, the bank failed and a lot of talented people lost their job. All because of the greedy few, on the top floor.

I met a couple in Detroit who owned 5 homes with tenants. The cash flow did not pay the mortgage but the increased equity allowed for another bank loan to buy the next house

I always wondered what happened to them. I met them briefly at the Detroit air port as they were leaving for a week in the southern resort area.