Richard Hoey, chief economist of Bank of New York - Mellon was on Bloomberg TV open exchange just now. He mentioned that the dollar is rising because hedge funds had been bearish on the dollar, and now have to unwind those leveraged trades to get more cash. The commentator mentioned that they just had Dr. Doom on (see below), who said that the only safe place to be right now is cash, and he also sees the dollar going up as he doesn't see how it could fall any further. Hoey also said that the dollar is the fulcrum [my word] of the global economy. In other words, it still acts as the central currency for trade, no matter how high or low it goes. The commentator also mentioned the unwinding of the Yen carry trade as an example of hedge fund liquidation. Time to look into ETFs that track the dollar.

Forbes article "ETFs Tumble On Investor Worries" recommends bying XLF, a financial sector index ETF that includes C, JPM, GS, MER. Trading at 10.7 times earnings. Maybe the bottom has been reached.