The Bank for International Settlements maintains a rich time series on real effective exchange rates; The Bundesbank keeps wonderful historical data. Interestingly, Econbrowser uses the data to show that the appreciation of the dollar against the euro is much less pronounced when we look at the broadest exchange rate measure. The answer is of course China holding its exchange rate with the US fixed.
Figure 1: USD/EUR exchange rate, monthly averages (blue line); synthetic euro before 1999M01. USD/EUR exchange rate on 6/4/2010 (blue square), Deutsche Bank forecasts as of 6/4/2010 (red squares) and forward rates (green triangles). Source: Fed via FREDII, Deutsche Bank, Exchange Rate Perspectives, June 8, 2010 [not online]. Despite the euro's depreciation, the dollar has exhibited much less movement on a real, trade-weighted, basis.
Real Effective Exchange Rates
Figure 2: Log broad trade weighted real USD (blue bold), CNY (red) and EUR (green). Source: BIS and author's calculations.
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