Even that is stating the bleeding obvious, since historic standards would have it about US75¢.

Funnily enough, a missing word was all it took to make the dollar airborne again. And an adverb at that. The last time the Reserve said the dollar was ''uncomfortably high'' was in December, when incidentally it was lower. There was no mistaking what that meant - the dollar should be lower, preferably around US80¢ to US85¢ , as board members were saying at that time.

So, why did the jawboning suddenly stop? Was it just jaw strain?

Well, it didn't seem to be working - at best a couple of cents lasting a few weeks - and no central bank wants to look silly.

Short of selling dollars, requiring very deep pockets, it would have to drop rates, which, ahem, are low by historic standards, as it would say. But with property prices on fire, that would be counterproductive, to say the least. A rise would be no better, because it would only push the dollar up even further. So, the Reserve is stuck between a rock and a hard place. No wonder it has settled for a ''period of interest rate stability'', even though this will hand billions to speculators in a one-way bet on a rising dollar, safe in the knowledge the Reserve won't undermine them by cutting rates.

Anyway I suspect it began having second thoughts about the wisdom of talking down the dollar when the December quarter inflation rate shot up.

Since then, the economy has improved to the point where there is no reason for the dollar to drop, especially while our historically low rates are still considerably higher than everybody else's and just as likely to rise before theirs.

In fact, foreigners snapped up 37 per cent of the recent bond tender and will be buying hundreds of billions of dollars to settle payment.

The best argument for it dropping was always that the US dollar would rise once the Federal Reserve started tapering down its extra money printing. Only there's a snag.

The Fed created the money by buying back government bonds and crediting bank accounts. So how come the prices of US bonds are rising when their biggest customer, the Fed, is buying fewer?

Tapering has unexpectedly lowered bond yields in the US, weakening the US dollar because better returns can be had elsewhere - like here, for instance.

Also, commodity prices aren't falling as fast as had been feared, although there is no denying they are past their peak. The price of our biggest export, iron ore, is even rising again, although that could be due to the tugboat strike at Port Hedland.

But the best prop of all for the dollar is China. Although it is supposed to be rebalancing its economy, there is growing stimulus by stealth. How else do you explain the, um, fast-tracking five new railway lines?

In all, it sounds to me like the dollar is telling us something. And, for a change, it's good news.