By: Barbara Zigah
In Asian trading today, the U.S. Dollar managed to recoup some of last Friday’s losses against the common currency Euro as investors once again turn their focus to the Eurozone’s fiscal worries.
As reported at 2:30 p.m. (JST) in Tokyo, the U.S. Dollar traded against the Euro at $1.3335; in Friday’s trading session it had struck $1.3438 at one point, a 1.5% decline and a new 2-week low. The greenback is also trading higher against the Japanese Yen, at 82.88 Yen; on Friday, it traded at 82.52 Yen, a 3-week low. Friday’s U.S. Dollar lows came in following the release of the non-farms payroll data from the U.S. Labor Department, which showed the unemployment rate rising to 9.8% from 9.6%, and new jobs added significantly fewer than economists had predicted.
Recent comments from Ben Bernanke, the U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman, brought some focus back to the greenback; the chairman noted that the next round of quantitative easing would be forthcoming, but that it might be as many as five years until the country’s unemployment stabilizes.
He also commented that, without Fed intervention, it was likely that the rate could have risen to as high as 25%. The U.S. Dollar Index, which gauges the greenback’s strength versus a weighted basket of currencies, hovered slight above 79.063 .DXY, the 2-week low struck on Friday.