how's the dollar doing?

rght now, the dollar is weakening. this is a fact. we all know this. but the question is how bad will the dollar slide?

Kathy Lien, Chief Strategist of the www.dailyfx.com has this in her column.

With the exception of producer prices, we expect more dollar bearish news and would actually be surprised if Bernanke had anything positive to say about the US economy. The Federal Reserve has cut interest rates by 225bp since August and it will be interesting to see if this has helped existing or new home sales in the month of January. According to the NAHB housing market index, bottom fishers are slowly beginning to sniff out the inventory, but just because they are sniffing do not mean that they are buying. Durable goods, fourth quarter GDP, personal income, personal spending and the Chicago PMI reports are also expected to be released, which means that a volatile week is in store for the currency market. There is a good chance that another round of weak US economic data could drive the US dollar to a record low against the Euro. We continue to believe that the next 2 months of retail sales and non-farm payrolls data will be particularly weak because the last time that we have seen service sector ISM fall to the levels that it did back in January was in 2001 and at that time, non-farm payrolls dropped 300k. In some ways, the latest crisis to the US economy is worse than 2001 which means that the 17k job loss that was reported by the Labor Department in January could pale in comparison to the losses that we could see in February and March. The same can be said for retail sales.

according to eric weiner of www.npr.org

The dollar is in free fall, or so it seems. In 2002, you could buy a euro for 86 cents. Today, it will cost you $1.40. You'd have to go back at least a decade to find a time when the U.S. dollar was so weak. Against some currencies, such as the Canadian dollar (the "loonie"), you'd have to go back 30 years. It sounds ominous, but is a weak dollar really so terrible?
Not necessarily. A weak dollar can be good for the U.S. economy, because it makes American exports cheaper and, therefore, helps close the trade deficit. But over the long term, the value of a country's currency is seen as a verdict on the overall health of its economy.