Few Seeing Usual Benefits of Rising Dollar

In India, another country seeing its currency's value dwindle against the greenback, Rajesh Jain, vice president of Indian brokerage firm SMC Global Securities, said that the new rates are throwing out textbook concepts that the health of a currency generally reflects the health of its economy.

"Today's stronger dollar runs counter to all the widely held economic theories. There is so much volatility, everything is in a state of flux. What we are seeing is not related to reality."

Thomas Huene, economist for the Federation of German Industries, said that even though the euro falling against the dollar should bring good news for German cars and other exports, that may not happen. With the U.S. economy contracting, he said, "the new exchange rate may prove to be just one drop in the ocean."

China's yuan is pegged to the dollar, so Chinese companies are protected against rapid currency swings in their dealings with the huge U.S. market. Though the dollar's appreciation can undermine their goods' competitiveness in non-dollar markets, it helps them import supplies from such places for manufacturing. In sum, most exporters, settling their contracts in the U.S. currency, have welcomed the dollar's rise.

But some are not counting on the dollar's bounce to last long and are trying to get their clients to shift their payments over to other currencies. "The rise of the exchange rate is temporary, like a momentary recovery of consciousness just before death," said He Fan, an international finance researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

In Argentina, the peso's fall is contributing to fears of another national debt default; when Comercial Mexicana, a retailing company that operates the Costco chain in Mexico, filed for bankruptcy protection last month, it cited $2 billion in losses related to the fall of the Mexican peso.

Simon Bradley, an executive vice president of Visit Britain who is based in New York, said, the pound's drop against the dollar "has been so sudden, consumers are waiting to see if this is real."

If the pound stays at around $1.60 to dollar, rather than the long-time range of over $2, he said, the national tourist agency will incorporate the favorable exchange rate into its January advertising campaign to try to lure Americans to Britain.

Many Americans living abroad, including Carl Wheeling, 68, who spent 30 years in the U.S. Navy, are already enjoying the sudden heft of the dollar. His pension check arrives in dollars in Soham, a town north of Cambridge, England, and it's now "kind of a relief" to cash it into pounds. "It's significant, no doubt about it."

When the pound peaked against the dollar in November 2007, it took $2.11 of his pension money to buy a single pound. Thursday it required just $1.63.

In Paris, analysts said the rise of the dollar is so far too recent and tenuous to have a substantial effect on tourism and exports. But they agreed that whatever stimulation the rate change might provide has thus far been eclipsed by the financial crisis and its effect on consumer psychology.

Philippe Marion, marketing director for the Barton and Guestier wine-exporting firm in the Bordeaux region, said that most wine export contracts are drawn up with an exchange rate fixed over an agreed time, such as three months or a year. As a result, the recent shift in the euro-dollar rate has not taken hold in wine sales.

In any case, Marion explained, the overriding factor for Bordeaux-region wine exporters is that economic worries in the United States have for the past several months already cut deeply into high-end exports.

Paul Roll, general director of the Paris Tourism and Convention Office, said tourism has not yet seen an impact. "The real question is for the year 2009," he said.

For the time being, however, tourists seem few and far between. A double-decker tourist bus pulling into Place Saint Michel on the Left Bank on Tuesday, for instance, had only four passengers. But those American tourists who did show up expressed satisfaction at seeing their dollars go a little further to underwrite the traditionally high prices of Paris.

"It's wonderful," said a New Jersey woman at the entrance to the Sainte Chapelle, the tiny 13th-century church famous for its stained glass windows.

Correspondents Edward Cody in Paris, Ariana Eunjung Cha in Shanghai and Rama Lakshmi in New Delhi and special correspondent Shannon Smiley in Berlin contributed to this report.