How to measure how the Australian dollar is faring independent of the US dollar
What you want is the average change in rate of the Australian Dollar against multiple other currencies, to even out the effect of moves in a single other currency. People often look at the trade-weighted exchange rate to get an idea of this, as it allows you to look at the currencies that are most relevant, rather than every tiny other currency having an equal weight. If you're interested in slower scale changes, one option is to use indexes that value a common commodity in different currencies such as the Big Mac Index.  If a Big Mac costs more in AUD but stays the same in USD, then AUD have gone up. The best answer to your question would to be what the interest rates are like in Australia itself.  The Reserve Bank sets the target ‘cash rate’, which is the market   interest rate on overnight funds. It uses this as the instrument for   monetary policy, and influences the cash rate through its financial   market operations. Decisions regarding the cash rate target are made   by the Reserve Bank Board and explained in a media release announcing   the decision at 2.30 pm after each Board meeting. (Prior to December   2007, media releases were issued only when the cash rate target was   changed.) From Investopedia: How Rates Are Calculated  Each central bank's board of directors controls the monetary policy of its    country and the short-term prime   interest rate that banks use to borrow from each other. When the   economy is doing well, interest rates are hiked in order to curb   inflation and when times are tough, cut rates to encourage lending and   inject money into the economy. Have a look at this from graph from http://www.rba.gov.au/monetary-policy/int-rate-decisions/ I would then go to a website that allows you to compare, graphically, whichever interest rate you want.(Or you could get the raw data and run some analysis, to each his own)  FYI, this topic (FX) is incredibly complex and I hope my answer satisfies your needs.Otherwise, talk to a quant. You will need a ton of data inputs to model the entire economy of Australia to try and predict what the central bank will do, which is what people try and do everyday. Best of luck! To make it simple, just use gold as the main benchmark. Gold price never moves, FIAT currencies move around the price of gold.  So, when comparing US$ and Australian dollars to the gold, you know which currency is moving up and which down.
"The simplest, most convenient way I know of to ""move your savings to Canada"" is to purchase an exchange-traded fund like FXC, the CurrencyShares Canadian Dollar Trust, or a similar instrument. (I identify this fund because I know it exists, not because I particularly recommend it.) Your money will be in Canadian currency earning Canadian interest rates. You will pay a small portion of that interest in fees. Since US banks are already guaranteed by the FDIC up to $250,000 per account, I don't really think you avoid any risks associated with the failure of an individual bank, but you might fare better if the US currency is subject to inflation or unfavorable foreign-exchange movements - not that such a thing would be a direct risk of a bank failure, but it could happen as a result of actions taken by the Federal Reserve under the auspices of aiding the economy if the economy worsens in the wake of a financial crisis - or, for that matter, if it worsens as a result of something else, including legislative, regulatory, or executive policies. Read the prospectus to understand additional risks with this investment. One of them is foreign-exchange risk. If the US economy and currency strengthen relative to the Canadian economy and its currency, you may lose substantial amounts of purchasing power. Additionally, one of the possible results of a financial crisis is a ""flight to safety""; the global financial markets still seem to think the US dollar is pretty safe, and they may bid it up as they have done in the past, resulting in losses to your position (at least in the short term). I do not personally recommend moving all your savings to Canada, especially if it deprives you of income from more profitable investments over the long term, but moving some of your savings to Canada at least isn't a stupid idea, and it may turn out to be somewhat profitable. Having some Canadian currency is also a good idea if you plan to spend the money that you are saving on Canadian goods in the intermediate future." It helps to put the numbers in terms of an asset. Say a bottle of wine costs 10 dollars, but the price rises to 20 dollars a year later. The price has risen 100%, and your dollars have lost value. Whereas your ten used to be worth 100% of the price of bottle of wine, they now are worth 50% of the risen price of a bottle of wine so they've lost around 50% of their value. Divide the old price by the new inflated price to measure proportionally how much the old price is of the new price. 10 divided by 20 is 1/2 or .50 or 50%. You can then subtract the old price from the new in proportional terms to find how much value you've lost. 1 minus 1/2 or 1.00 minus .50 or 100% minus 50%. "You might want to read about about the Coase Theorem.  ""In law and economics, the Coase theorem, attributed to Ronald Coase, describes the economic efficiency of an economic allocation or outcome in the presence of externalities. The theorem states that if trade in an externality is possible and there are no transaction costs, bargaining will lead to an efficient outcome regardless of the initial allocation of property rights. In practice, obstacles to bargaining or poorly defined property rights can prevent Coasian bargaining."" This is similar to what you are asking. Each country has an endowment of gold, and they must create a set amount of money to represent their endowment of gold. This will establish an exchange rate. If I have 5 tons of gold and you have 5 tons, and I print 10 dollars and you print 20, then one of my dollars is worth two of your dollars.  Thus, the amount of money is not relevant-  it's the exchange rate between the countries. If all the nations know each other's gold endowment, then we will have a perfect exchange rate. If we don't, then currency printing will vary but arbitrage should drive it to an accurate price.  Gold and diamonds are both valuable in part due to scarcity, but gold has been used as a measure of value because it's been historically used as a medium of exchange. People just realized that swapping paper was safer and cheaper than physically transporting gold, but the idea of gold as a measure of value is present because ""that's how it's always been."" Nobody ""creates/supervises"" these procedures, but organizations like the IMF, ECB, Fed Reserve, etc implement monetary policy to regulate the money supply and arbitrage drives exchange rates to fair values." "This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-forex-idUSKBN19L04P) reduced by 73%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; NEW YORK The U.S. dollar recovered slightly on Friday, but posted its biggest quarterly decline against a basket of rival currencies in nearly seven years after hawkish signals from foreign central banks this week pressured the greenback further.  &gt; The U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of six major currencies, declined about 4.6.DXY percent for the second quarter to mark its steepest quarterly percentage drop since the third quarter of 2010.  &gt; The dollar fell against the Canadian dollar and was last at C$1.2971 after touching a nearly 10-month low of C$1.2948 earlier.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6krjbv/the_us_dollar_recovered_slightly_on_friday_but/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~157298 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **dollar**^#1 **percent**^#2 **against**^#3 **euro**^#4 **Bank**^#5" No. And just a caution about that super low risk: suppose that you lived during the late 70s and early 80s, when savers in the United States could get interest rates over 10% for savings.  You put your money into an account in 1980, knowing that in five years, you'll have made a solid amount of interest.  Except that you might have been smarter to convert your money to AUD and save in that currency because it would have moved from 0.88 in value to 1.43 in value (in principal only, not interest - when I look at the RBA's bank interest, it appears they were also paying double digit interest to savers). Now, I get that this may not be the answer that you want to see because it means that if the interest rates were higher in the US, for savers, they might be higher elsewhere too, and it also means that what may appear to be a super low risk could actually be a high risk. It's called correlation. I found this: http://www.forexrazor.com/en-us/school/tabid/426/ID/437424/currency-pair-correlations it looks a good place to start Similar types of political economies will correlate together, opposite types won't. Also there are geographic correlations (climate, language etc) Here's my attempt, without talking about apples or anything:  Essentially, the 'money supply' is determined by the central bank, since they are the issuers of money. You can read on your US dollars that they are issued by the federal reserve. An excellent measure of the money supply is NGDP, since this is the number of dollars traded every year (that sort of quantifies how many dollars are available to be captured by working, trade, etc.). Unfortunately, in 2008, the US Fed decided to adopt an ultra-tight monetary policy, resulting in a severe drop-off in NGDP relative to previous trend (the worst since the Great Depression, graphs here: http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/06/19/guest-post-measuring-the-stance-of-monetary-policy-through-ngdp-and-prices-by-integral/)  It does not look like it will ever recover to the previous trend, so the money supply is much smaller than people would have expected before 2008. In theory, the nominal value of money shouldn't matter in the long run. However, since people before 2008 signed contracts (read, 30-year mortgages) anticipating a much higher aggregate money supply, this has triggered a shortfall in demand ever since, which has left our economy in the tank. Wow this is a bad article.  This is a notional amount....  Eg.  $500M US equity fund in Australia wants to hedge their US exposure.   They buy a $500M forward contract and roll it over quarterly.  Each quarter they settle on the difference (let's say $50 - 500k +/- depending on the way FX moves).  What matters is the amount owed...not the notional value.  Same goes for interest rates. $1B bond fund could short the 10yr to lower interest rate sensitivity...the end value isn't $1B. It's whatever they owe on the difference at settlement.  The issue of swap spreads or settlement/liquidity is so much more important!