Posts Tagged Dow Jones

ECB Governor: Rates On Hold

Posted by Tetyana Matychak in Banks on June 14th, 2010

European Central Bank governor Athanasios Orphanides indicated in an interview with Dow Jones Newswires that interest rates in the euro zone will remain on hold for many months, urging European politicians to tackle yawning inefficiencies in fiscal governance.

If Europe’s leaders fail to get their act together, then another financial crisis or debt crisis may well be around the corner, he warned.

Speaking in an interview following the ECB’s policy-setting meeting on Thursday, Mr. Orphanides said the outlook for consumer price inflation in the euro zone remains benign, despite the recent uptick in prices.

Core inflation, which excludes volatile components such as energy and food, has been trending down, he said, pointing to slack private consumption in the 16 countries that make up the euro zone.

“In light of these developments, I do not view high inflation as a concern,” said Mr. Orphanides, who was born in Cyprus and educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Read the rest of this entry »

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Dollar gets modest boost from rising trade tensions

Posted by Tetyana Matychak in Currency on September 15th, 2009

The U.S. dollar got a modest lift versus the euro and most other major currencies Monday, with rising U.S.-China trade tensions prompting investors to unwind some short positions on the beleaguered greenback.

China said Sunday it would launch an anti-dumping investigation into U.S. sales of chicken and auto products, a move apparently in response to Washington’s decision to impose punitive sanctions on Chinese tire imports late last week.

“Talk of rising trade tensions after President Obama announced tariffs on Chinese imports may have acted as a catalyst [for a dollar rebound], but the move is unlikely to lead to a trade war,” wrote strategists at Brown Brothers Harriman. “So far the dollar’s recovery has been muted.”

The euro traded at $1.4558 versus the dollar in recent action, down from $1.4587 in North American trade late Friday. Rising risk appetite last week helped push the euro to a new high for the year above $1.46.

The British pound changed hands at $1.6553, down from $1.6685. Read the rest of this entry »

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Euro-Zone Unemployment Rate Hits 10-Year High

Posted by Tetyana Matychak in Budget, Currency on July 1st, 2009

The unemployment rate in the 16 countries that use the euro rose more than expected and to the highest level for a decade in May as more companies laid off staff in a bid to survive the deepest recession since World War II, official data showed.

The euro-zone jobless rate rose to 9.5% in May from an upwardly revised 9.3% in April, the highest level since May 1999 and 2.1 percentage points higher than in May last year, the European Union’s Eurostat statistics agency said.

The increase was stronger than the market consensus estimate of a rise to 9.4% from a Dow Jones Newswires survey of economists last week. April’s jobless rate was also revised up from 9.2% reported last month.

Eurostat said 273,000 people joined unemployment queues across the euro zone in May, bringing the total number of jobless to 15 million, more than the entire populations of Austria and Ireland combined.

The rise in the number of people out of work darkens the outlook for consumer spending and suggests it may take longer for the region to recover from recession. Read the rest of this entry »

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