During a crisis, never mind what the media or government officials are saying, follow the money.

The Mercantile Exchange (CME) posts open contracts for each currency traded -- both long and short positions. By subtracting them you can get a sense of whether traders are net long or short. In the case of the euro, traders are net short 40,000 contracts or nearly $8 billion.

Meanwhile, officials of struggling countries, Greece, Spain and Portugal are telling the media that they have things under control. Elena Salgado, Spanish finance minister and Jose Manuel Campo, her deputy flew to London to meet with bondholders, the Financial Times reports. They want to reassure promises to cut Spain's budget deficit by 3% of GDP by 2013. But then the treasury wants to raise 116.7 billion euros.

It sometimes is a small, unpredicted event that moves markets. Today it was Jean-Claude Trichet, the president of the European Central Bank. He unexpectedly left a meeting in Australia to attend special meeting of European leaders to address the region's economy.

That was the trigger that shot off a turnaround in world markets. Stocks and commodities are trading higher in anticipation that the Greek sovereign debt problem will be dealt with. The U.S. market, just opened, did it with a bang as the Dow industrials more than recovered its triple digit loss from Monday to be back above the 10,000 mark.

On Thursday, markets across Europe, Asia and the U.S. sold off sharply. The reason is concern over Greece, Spain and Portugal being unable to manage their sovereign debts. The problem did not vanish overnight. The spread between the Greek and German 10-year government debt expanded since Thursday. Investors and traders sold the euro and bought dollars. Again on Friday, even with the Swiss Central Bank selling its own currency, the euro is still under pressure.

The dollar is strong again Friday, with the U.S. dollar index trading at 80.39, up .315 (8:30 EDT). In contrast, the euro has fallen 1.1% so far this week. This is the fourth consecutive week of losses.

Thinking about diversifying a portion of your portfolio out of the dollar, and in to, perhaps, other hard currencies, such as the euro?

About six months ago, selling dollars and to buy euros appeared to be such a slam-dunk, no-risk investment move. After all, the United States was and will continue to record $1 trillion-plus deficits that are destined to result in further weakening in the dollar in 2010. The dollar will fall, the dollar-bears argue: it's a no-brainer.

When a country's economy gets stronger, its currency follows. The recent unemployment report on Dec. 4 was much better than expected. If the economy is stronger, the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates. Both of these factors have sparked a dollar rally.

The rally was most likely caused by short-covering, the Financial Times reports. When a trader "sells short," he or she must "buy" to cover the position. The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), where currency contracts are traded, keeps a running tally of the long and short positions in each currency. On Dec. 1, there were 172,367 net short dollar positions. By Dec. 8, this number had dropped to 107,284, The value of this shift in net positions was $9.8 billion dollars.

The European Central Bank Thursday kept its key, short-term interest rate the same at 1%, a move investors in Europe and around the world no-doubt welcomed, for several reasons.

First, Europe's economy is nowhere near sustainable growth status: euro-zone GDP will likely to show a 3.7-4.0% contraction in 2009, and post only a modest increase in 2010 -- perhaps as low as 0.5-1.0% GDP growth. ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet underscored as much. "We know we have a bumpy road ahead of us," Trichet said, Reuters reported Thursday.

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke did something Monday that Fed chairs rarely do: he commented on the dollar.

Comments about the dollar are almost exclusively left to the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury, but on Monday Bernanke, in a speech before the Economic Club of New York, said the large movement of capital precipitated by the financial crisis "resulted in a marked increase in the dollar," and those flows are now returning to their former status, due to improved credit market conditions and the stabilization of global economic activity.

The US dollar is down 20% since 2002 on a trade weighted basis. Other world economies like China are dynamic, with growth rates of 8 and 9%. With that kind of clout, countries like China, India and Brazil, can choose where to place their reserves.

Slowly, developing countries are shifting their reserves away from the dollar into the euro and yen. Neil Mellor, strategist at Bank of New York Mellon Corp (NYSE: BK), which has some $20 trillion dollars in assets under custody said: "I don't think there will be an imminent move, but it is quite clear there's a plan to shift reserves to a more balanced portfolio."

Barclays Capital Research reported that central banks placed 63% of new cash in non US currencies between April and July.

Investors have probably heard Obama administration officials, like previous Bush administration officials –- and just about every other administration since 1981 -- rattle off the mantra, 'The United States is committed to a strong dollar' even as the dollar continues to weaken. What's going on here?

Well, first: the currency market, long-term, emphasizes actions, not words, and current U.S. public policies do not support the dollar. To strengthen it, the U.S. must cut its trade deficit, eliminate the budget deficit, and get the U.S. economy growing at an adequate rate again.

The U.S. dollar continued to decline today, and has helped push gold prices up sharply in today's action.

The dollar has been very weak lately, and as more concern mounts of the dollar's strength more investors are rushing into the precious metal, which traded up as high as $1,069.70 today, and is currently up $1.70 an ounce to $1,059.20.

The US dollar is cascading downward. This move is causing banks, especially central banks, to shift reserves out of the dollar into the euro and yen.

A Bloomberg survey reports that policy makers boosted currency holdings by $41.3 billion dollars in the last quarter. Nations reporting currency breakdowns put 63% of this new cash into euros, and yen. The dollar's share fell to 37% from 63% in 1998.

How is this affecting the dollar on the commodity futures markets? The dollar fell to 75.77 last week on the Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (ICE). This is the lowest level since March 4th, when it was at 89.62 (The dollar is traded against a basket of currencies.)

Is a 'super-currency' – one that could for all intents and purpose replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency – possible?

Well, it is possible, but in this case the aforementioned switch would certainly be super, as it would represent a gargantuan task and adjustment period for members of the global financial system.

What's one way to lower U.S. gasoline prices? Cut the U.S. budget deficit.

The two seemingly disparate conditions are, in fact, linked. A large deficit, such as the one the United States has been running for basically the past decade (and especially since the start of the financial crisis), weakens the dollar.

What's next for the dollar? Good question. It depends on which set of economic data points you emphasize, or which mindset/narrative you believe is dominant in the currency markets.

After a nearly two-week decline against the world's other, major currencies, the dollar see-sawed with the euro for the upper hand Friday, as dollar bulls and dollar bears each tried to make their case that their view was more supported by current conditions. The dollar strengthened one-half cent versus the euro to $1.4696 and about 1.8 cents versus the British pound to $1.6260 on Friday at mid-day.

Oil traders have been flocking into the precious crude today as the U.S. dollar fell to a new yearly low against the euro.

Oil prices have passed through the psychological $70 barrier, and continued to move higher, currently trading up $3.12 on the day to $71.14. Oil is not the only commodity that has been moving higher, as gold prices moved through the $1,000 mark for the first time since this past February.