Government actions to improve credit markets could weaken dollar, spike oil

Based on the decline in two key measures of business risk, it appears that the actions of global financial leaders is beginning to thaw out the frozen credit markets. This improvement means that the dollar will drop as investors take their money out of U.S. Treasury bills to buy stocks. It also means that the price of oil will rise -- since a weaker dollar means it takes more of them to buy a barrel of oil.

What are these measures of business risk? The TED spread -- which is the difference between the three month London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and the three year Treasury rate -- has declined from its high of 4.65% to 4.09%. This is a big improvement but a far cry from the 1.04% at which it stood a month before. And the the LIBOR-OIS spread -- a measure of inter-bank lending risk -- fell to 3.41% from its record high 3.67% Friday -- still much higher than the 0.30% at which it stood a year ago. Things are getting better but there's a long way to go.

Meanwhile the dollar is losing altitude as oil prices rise. The dollar is losing ground to the Euro now that panicked global investors are getting out of Treasuries. For instance, the euro climbed to 1.3712 dollars from 1.3576 dollars in New York on Monday. Oil hit a 14 month low of $77.70 last Friday but has traded as high as $83 today.