India Saturday 02 January 2009: The US dollar lost much of its luster over the past decade as its status as a global reserve currency was challenged and its value Why currency keeps fluctuating On the foreign exchange market, the euro was virtually on parity with the dollar at December 31, 1999 but a decade later the greenback has fallen by 30 percent against the single European currency.

The euro, launched on January 1, 1999, fetched around 1.43 dollars on Thursday, the last trading day of the year.

The dollar’s rapid fall against the euro is ironic as the US Federal Reserve had to come to the rescue of the faltering single European currency in September 2000 as part of a coordinated market intervention by major central banks.

The greenback also faced the same misfortune against other key currencies.

While it was roughly stable against the British pound, it has lost nearly 10 percent against the yen and a hefty 35 percent against the Swiss franc in the past decade.

The trade-weighted US dollar index, a measure of the value of the US dollar relative to other world currencie

s, has lost 11 percent in the past 10 years.