March 11, 2015:  With negative short term interest rates from Germany's Federal Reserve, money is flowing into US bonds, CDs, and savings account where you can get better yield.  This has caused the US dollar to surge. The chart below shows the US dollar is at a 12-yr high.    Strong Dollar Questions:

1. Will the strong US dollar make US goods too expensive and hurt earnings?
   or
2. Will the strong US dollar make it cheaper for US companies like Apple to buy parts overseas and pay labor in China to build their goods thus leading to stronger profits?
3. Germany's Bundesbank Interest Rates
   

From Chartoftheday.com¹

Sluggish economic news out of China put downward pressure on the US stock market -- the Dow was down 1.85% on the day. While several major economies are struggling (e.g. Europe and China), the US economy has been performing relatively well. After all, the Fed is considering raising rates as early as June. This relative divergence in economic strength has sent the US dollar surging higher. For some perspective, today's chart illustrates the trend of the US dollar index over the past 20 years. Notice how the US dollar has risen sharply since June 2014 -- a gain that is comparable in both duration and magnitude to what occurred during the height of the financial crisis (2008). The concern going forward is that a significantly stronger dollar will make it much more difficult for US corporations to compete and ultimately have a negative impact on earnings..

The dollar is going up because short term interest rates in some European countries like Germany are negative.  That is banks have to pay 0.20% to Germany's Federal Reserve to hold their cash until they need it!  Compare that to the US where you can get 1.0% in FDIC accounts and you can see why money is pouring into the US.

CDs from Banks You Can Trust

From http://www.bundesbank.de/  Prices and yields of listed Federal securities for March 2015: