A hundred dollars a barrel for oil? Been there, done that. One thousand dollars for an ounce of gold? Still waiting. But the latest big market threshold has now been broken: the euro at $1.50.

The dollar fell to $1.50 against the euro in trading today. The dollar also weakened against the British pound, which again flirted with $2. And the dollar fell to an all-time low against the Swiss franc.

"We're in a new regime for the dollar," Bilal Hafeez, global head of currency strategy at Deutsche Bank in London, told Bloomberg News. "The proximate cause has been European data, which has indicated that Europe hasn't suffered on the growth side as the U.S. has."

The slide in the value of the dollar began several years ago and is picking up steam amid signs that the Federal Reserve will need to make additional cuts in interest rates. Lower interest rates typically weaken a currency's value.

Those expectations were heightened on Tuesday after separate reports showed a broad slump in housing prices and a rise in foreclosures. Fed chairman Ben Bernanke may give further clues to the Fed's direction when he delivers his semiannual testimony on monetary policy to the House Financial Services Committee this morning.

The European central bank, meanwhile, has been holding interest rates steady. In the last 12 months, the dollar has fallen 14 percent against the euro, which made its debut in January 1999. The euro is the common currency for 15 European nations.

The weak dollar is, of course, good for American exporters and bad for American tourists in Europe.

More significant may be the role that it plays in inflation. Imports become more expensive. Mitigating that is the fact that the most crucial import, oil, is priced in dollars. Still, any upward pressure comes at a time when inflationary pressures are worrying investors.