Here's a bit of trivia for you. What do Sweden and Australia have in common?
If you answered that they both played a pioneering role in the early days of cinema, you certainly would be correct but the judges would probably reject your answer on the grounds that the question wasn't in the history category but, rather, in current events.
And if you mentioned anything about Abba, leave the room now.
The more pertinent answer is that Australia and Sweden, along with a handful of other countries like Canada, suddenly have become the muscle men of international currency markets.
It is a situation that is likely to persist for quite some time and to which our corporations and export industries will need to adapt, for there is every indication that a major realignment in global currencies is under way.
After two frenetic years of bust and boom, global sharemarkets have paused to catch their collective breath, awaiting real economic recovery to catch up.
Volatility since has shifted to currencies. And within the past few months the accepted rules of currency trading have been, if not quite abandoned, seriously modified.
The Australian dollar has always been a heavily traded currency, largely because of its exposure to global commodity prices. Movements in those prices affect national income and traders just love an easy instrument with which to turn a buck.
With resource prices again shooting higher, attention predictably has focused Down Under.
Another major driver is interest rates. Like osmosis, money tends to flow from areas where there is surplus cash and rates are low, to areas with a shortage of cash that pay more.
Historically, Australia tends to fall into the latter category. Large amounts of capital traditionally have flowed into the country to finance our infrastructure development and our export capacity, most recently with the resources boom. Hence our traditionally higher interest rates.
The same logic applies to Canada.
So where does Sweden fit in?
The Scandinavian country is not a resource exporter and has very low interest rates, two factors that in ordinary circumstances would confine its tender to the ''exotic'' bin. And yet the krona is on the radar screens as ''currency to buy''.
The reason is that since debt problems emerged in Iceland and more recently in Dubai and Greece, traders and economists are frantically re-evaluating sovereign risk and the potential for default.
Risk, an old-fashioned concept that looked to have been defeated in the noughties by the mathematical wizards that invented securitisation and credit default swaps, is now very much in vogue. Money is flowing into countries that have managed their national balance sheets, countries that have low government debt. And that's where Australia, Sweden and Canada get a large tick.
In the past few weeks the euro has tumbled and the British pound has taken a battering, and some economists are of the opinion that the British economy has been managed only marginally better than that of Greece. Huge government debt, only partly the result of the massive bail-out and stimulus packages that followed the financial crisis, has begun to weigh on investors's minds.
Not surprisingly, those crashing currencies have had the effect of boosting the Australian dollar to record highs against the euro and to levels not seen for decades against the pound.
Against the US dollar, the little Aussie battler has been hovering around the low 90s for months now. That's strong historically, at least if measured since the free float in 1983, and it is only likely to strengthen as America grapples with its ballooning national debt.
Another contributing factor to what is shaping up as an era of prolonged Aussie strength is that our trading partners appear determined to remain undervalued.
Once upon a time, a strong currency was a source of national pride as politicians strutted the globe with a ''mine is bigger than yours'' attitude. Not any more.
While many of them mouth platitudes about protecting their currencies, right now, it appears that central bankers and governments in the US and across the European Union are more than happy for them to fall.
A lower currency means better export performance and a chance to trade your way out of difficulty. Normally, you would run the risk of igniting inflation by allowing your currency to drop. But weak demand and spare global capacity should ensure that does not arise for some time.
Then of course, there is China. The powerhouse of the global economy and the back on which we now ride, China has had the yuan tied to the US dollar since mid 2008. In essence, the world's fastest growing economy has harnessed itself to the monetary policy of one of the world's sickest economies.
China has been under enormous pressure to allow the yuan to rise just as it did in 2006. And over the weekend it appeared that was about to happen, although officials later backtracked.
The cheap yuan has given China an enormous pricing advantage and helped it overtake Germany as the world's biggest exporter.
China has used the proceeds of that export boom to amass a $US2.4 trillion hoard of foreign reserves, most of it American denominated.
In recent times, however, it has been buying Australian currency and investments as it tries to diversify its foreign holdings, again helping to push up the value of our currency.
During the recent profit reporting season a host of companies blamed the strong Aussie dollar for a lacklustre earnings result, and the resources sector was the hardest hit.
They had better grow accustomed to it.
