Federal Reserve

The official exchange rates for the US Dollar (USD) are published by the Federal Reserve (FED), the central banking system of the United States of America (USA).

Updated on every Monday, this weekly report includes 23 currencies for the working days of the past week. This gap of seven days is far from our aim to provide daily exchange rates, but there is nothing we can do about it, except to bring automated access to this economic information to who could be interested in.

So, despite the delay on this publication, and due to its important role in the world’s economy, the FED plug-in has been included on foxer currency calculator latest version 10 release.

FED/USD Historical Series

Time series are available for the FED since 2011.06.01. It is not a Physical History File, so missing data can be retrieved on demand from the Calendar, month by month.

Economic relevance

The United States of America is the world’s largest economy by nominal GDP, followed by the European Union and China. The USA has a highly-diversified, world-leading industrial sector. It is also a high-technology innovator with the second largest industrial output in the world.

The USD is the currency most used in international transactions and is the world’s foremost reserve currency, backed by its science and technology, its military, and its central role in a range of international institutions and the petrodollar system.

Situation by the end of Q3 2023

Even though the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates to 5.25% and inflation remains around 3.7% in September, the US economy continues to remain strong with a healthy industry and full employment. The war in Ukraine has served to reactivate the NATO organization and significantly increase the sale of weapons and liquefied gas to Europe, today effectively disconnected from Russia.

But the United States is slowly losing weight and strength internationally. The United Arab Emirates, a traditional ally, has refused to expand crude oil production, in fact reducing it in line with the other OPEC members, and has joined the growing BRICS group. This group of countries, led by China and Russia, are little by little forming a new alternative geopolitical pole to the one created by the United States and maintained by the hegemony of the dollar and the institutions that support it, such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the Swift currency exchange system.

Forced by this situation, the United States keeps crude oil prices low at the expense of selling its own reserves. What’s more, this year the debt ceiling had to be suspended because it reached $31.4 trillion in January and experts warn that there is a risk of a lightning crowding out effect, because the Federal Government is going to issue a lot of debt in a short time, displacing the private sector.

The recent outbreak in Israel adds a severe uncertainty multiplier effect to this whole scenario, with the risk of escalation with Iran, another petroleum producer. And although the dollar continues to be the safe-haven currency par excellence and dominates 80% of global transactions, more and more voices are appearing to warn of a not-so-distant and possible fall of the American empire, like Frank Giustra in the article: Why the U.S. dollar will be replaced as the dominant global currency sooner than you think.

J.P. Morgan and others, in turn, argue that the US hegemony will stand for long and prefer to frame this situation as a recurrent theme throughout post-war history, that has returned into focus due to geopolitical and geostrategic shifts. You can read the entire post in this article about currencies and de-dollarization.