Currency Exchanges

Russia's fiscal crisis deepened Wednesday as the ruble plunged to new lows, falling 40% in value against the German mark after the Central Bank took the drastic step of temporarily halting major trades of rubles for dollars. As Russians lined up at banks across the country in the hope of withdrawing their savings from the nation's teetering financial institutions, acting Prime Minister Viktor S.

Is the Mexican economic recovery, especially the strengthening peso, too much of a good thing? That, ironically, is the subject of much debate these days in Mexico, where the stronger peso has some economists fingering their worry beads. They point to the peso's rising value against the dollar on currency exchanges, despite Mexican inflation totaling 30% over the last 18 months.

The rocking chair is worn and dilapidated, like the rest of Cuba. Manuel sits in the shade of his porch on the outskirts of Havana, overlooking a neighborhood of modest homes baking in the August sun. Idly waving away the summer's plague of flies, he rocks and waits for a sign. Nothing stirs on the cracked and potholed street stretching in front of his house. At the corner, a line of people waits endlessly for a bus.

A sense of crisis swept Japan Wednesday as the dollar fell in Tokyo to yet another post-World War II low. "I can't think of any way to describe our feelings except to say that we're in shock," said Minoru Tsukada, spokesman for Oki Electric Industry Co., a leading manufacturer of communications equipment. "We never expected that the yen would get this strong." His comment reflected virtually universal sentiment here as the currency fell to a new global low of 88.

Doug Morrison saw the snow outside his Edmonton, Canada, bedroom window one morning last week and knew this was the time. Three hours later, he was on a plane to Palm Springs. By lunchtime, the 49-year-old Canadian bureaucrat was checking out a two-bedroom condominium on a golf course, priced to sell at $322,500. Later that afternoon, Morrison pondered the deal as he dined at a sidewalk table in his shirt sleeves.

The euro passed parity with the U.S. dollar Monday, attaining a symbolic breakthrough almost seven months after the 3-year-old European currency went into public use in 12 countries. The euro was pegged at $1.17 when it was introduced for limited use in January 1999, then plummeted over some 20 months to a low of about 82.3 cents. Monday's close in New York at nearly $1.

It's confusing. The pale blue bank note that says 1,000,000 Zimbabwean dollars really means 10,000,000,000,000,000,000. Yes, that's 10 quintillion, taking into account the 13 zeros Zimbabwe's central bank has lopped off in the last couple of years to make the country's currency somewhat more manageable. Every time they get out of hand, Zimbabwe's Reserve Bank scythes away 00000s.

Argentina on Sunday unveiled its strategy to pull the crisis-wracked economy from recession, saying it would ditch the U.S. dollar, fully float the devalued peso and partially lift a savings freeze that sparked public outrage and riots. Economy Minister Jorge Remes Lenicov said the government would run the economy just on pesos, turn all dollar bank loans into pesos at the pre-devaluation one-to-one rate and give people full access to wages paid into the bank.

The sharp rally in the dollar--aided most recently by a dramatic joint effort by U.S., German and Japanese central banks to boost the U.S. currency--reflects a fundamental shift in currency traders' view of the beleaguered greenback and the world economy.