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Almost out of nowhere, the once-ailing U.S. dollar has come storming back. That’s good news on several fronts.

A stronger dollar will quell simmering domestic inflation, which last month reached a worrisome 5.6 percent over July a year ago, a 17-year high.

And a stronger dollar is both a cause and effect of falling oil and commodity prices. Crude oil fell 24 percent in a month. One reason for that is the “greedy speculators” that Congress likes to denounce are getting out of commodities and into dollar investments.

Falling commodity prices, especially of foodstuffs, are a boon for poorer countries and, as in the United States, will have the effect of dampening inflation in Asia and especially China, where inflation was running at more than 8 percent early this year and seemed on the verge of introducing that country to the dubious joys of stagflation — flat growth and rising prices.

The strengthening dollar comes somewhat at others’ expense. Japan’s gross domestic product shrank in the spring quarter and so did the 15-nation euro zone’s, the first contraction in its history. And the British government says it expects its economy to stagnate over the coming year.

The dollar reached highs for the year against the yen and the euro — 8 percent in the last month alone — and has a winning streak against the pound that the Associated Press says is the longest in 37 years.

The newly robust dollar represents a judgment by international markets that, as The Economist put it, “The mess in America suddenly seems less awful,” and a recognition that the U.S. economy for all its problems is wonderfully resilient.