NPR.

Imagine the world as a big shopping mall, and every country is its own store.

And if you're an American walking through this global mall, the whole place for you

is basically on sale right now.

According to a couple of popular indicators that track the value of the dollar against a

whole bunch of other currencies, the dollar has appreciated somewhere between 8 and 13% just

in the past year.

And actually, a lot of the increase happened in the past couple of months.

If you're an American who's taken an international vacation recently, you might have noticed this.

But actually, you don't even have to be abroad to benefit from the shifting exchange rate.

You could be like David.

David lives in Maryland, but his daughter attends college in the UK.

You know, the dollar is appreciating against just about everybody.

So for us as an American family, her expenses just went down.

Is she aware of it and trying to take advantage of that difference at all?

She's like, Hey, you know, Dad, you could give me like 10% more beer money now because

the dollar is stronger.

Since I'm an economist, I guess probably what I should tell her is I'm going to give

you fewer dollars per month now because they're worth more and you don't need them.

Well, apologies to David start if you're planting that idea.

Whoops.

This is the indicator from Planet Money.

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