By Sandra Block
From Kiplinger’s Personal Finance
If you treat yourself to a trip to Paris for the holidays, you’ll pay less to toast the New Year than you would have last year.
The dollar is the strongest it has been in decades against the euro, British pound and Japanese yen. Many emerging-markets currencies have plummeted to all-time lows against the dollar.
Global travelers can thank the Federal Reserve, which has been raising interest rates in an effort to combat inflation. Higher rates make investments in Treasury bonds more attractive to investors, increasing the value of the dollar. Although the Fed’s goal is to curb inflation by slowing economic growth, the U.S. economy is still strong on a relative basis, which contributes to the dollar’s strength. The pandemic plunged many countries’ economies into recession, but the U.S. recovered much more quickly than the rest of the world, says Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Analytics….