Another week, another set of losses for the dramatically diminishing dollar, which on Friday slumped to its lowest level since October 1997 in trade-weighted terms.

The continuing sell-off came amid a series of events that should, in theory, have aided the greenback. The Federal Reserve released a broadly hawkish monetary policy statement, Thursday’s US trade data was far better than feared, and the US Treasury declined to formally cite China for currency manipulation, a ruling that would have been expected to drive further Asian gains against the dollar.