There's an obvious distinction to be made between exports and corporate earnings when gauging the impact of the dollar's value in relation to other currencies, but this report fails miserably to make that clear.

Yes, a rising dollar will hurt both exports and the ability of U.S.-based multinational corporations that don't hedge currency risk to meet their earnings targets. But those are two entirely different things.

In the first case, a strenghening dollar makes prices of U.S.-made goods sold abroad more expensive, hurting sales.

In the second case, it makes profits earned abroad smaller when translated back into dollars. But sales may be exactly the same regardless.

And only the impact of the dollar on exports has much if any bearing on the economy. The impact on sales of goods made abroad is purely on reported earnings. There's no difference to cash flow from a rising dollar on such sales when a company reinvests the earnings there, or on a company's financial position as a result.

So who cares about that except investors focused on whether companies meet or miss their quarterly earnings forecasts once those earnings are translated into dollars? Answer: No one.

That may nonetheless keep United Technologies' CFO Gregory Hayes awake at night, as he tells Bloomberg. But it has absolutely nothing to do with U.S. GDP, or whether a company should be hiring or laying off workers as a result of trends in demand.

So when Bloomberg quotes the economics Nobel laureate Robert Munnell on concerns about the weakening euro choking off the U.S. recovery, and then goes on to focus on how it will mess with companies' EPS reported in dollars, the article mischaracterizes the risk and conflates the interests of multinational corporations with that of the U.S.

There's a reason these companies ventured abroad, and it's to diversify their exposure to the U.S. economy. And that makes good sense for their investors, regardless of currency risk.

But that doesn't necessarily benefit the economy, except perhaps through higher tax revenue as a result of stronger sales abroad. Indeed, domestic demand and employment would benefit more from exports by companies manufacturing in the U.S. than from multinationals making profits abroad. Why do Bloomberg's reporters fail to see or say that?