U.S. employers are planning slightly higher pay raises in 2012, with top-performing staff to get more than average workers, according to Personal Finance editor Andrea Coombes. However, the bulk of the gains won't keep up with inflation. Stacey Delo reports.
”Investors are clearly waiting for Fed Chairman Bernanke to give a nod towards QE3 [a third round of quantitative easing] at Jackson Hole on Friday,” said Chris Walker, currency strategist at UBS. “We remain skeptical, however, and our U.S. economists do not expect another round of balance-sheet expansion given the current price/activity setup.”
The dollar index /quotes/zigman/1652083 DXY -0.02% , which tracks the greenback against a basket of six major rivals, fell to 73.716 from 73.895 in North American trade late Tuesday.
Failure to signal a further round of quantitative easing or other measures would likely disappoint dollar bears, UBS says. A further round of easing would be seen undercutting the greenback as the Fed boosts the supply of dollars.
The euro /quotes/zigman/4867933/sampled EURUSD +0.0052% traded at $1.4453, up from $1.4427 late Tuesday, after initially dipping in the wake of a much steeper-than-expected fall in the Ifo index of German business climate for August.
The currency also remained insulated from increased bickering over the terms of the new euro-zone bailout for Greece as Finland said it would continue to demand collateral from Athens, prompting Austrian officials to demand similar treatment, news reports said.
The European Central Bank said banks borrowed 2.8 billion euros at its marginal lending facility Wednesday, up from €555 million in the previous session. But traders appeared relieved that no banks used the ECB’s dollar-liquidity facility after a bank last week tapped it for $500 million, stoking worries about funding pressures for European banks, said analysts at RBC Capital Markets.
The dollar traded at 76.5 Japanese yen /quotes/zigman/4868099/sampled USDJPY -0.1500% , down from ¥76.72, with the yen finding no pressure in the wake of a decision by credit-rating firm Moody’s Investors Service to cut the country’s credit rating one notch to Aa3. Read about the downgrade.
“Japan downgrades, which have been happening for years, are a useful reminder that downgrading a major sovereign clearly does not imply, per se, that its currency will fall or its bond yields rise,” said Kit Juckes, head of foreign exchange at Societe Generale in London.
“Indeed, if anything it just reminds us that rating agencies place a lot of importance on debt levels, when in fact, these do not correlate well at all with the probability of sovereign default,” he said, in a note.
The British pound /quotes/zigman/4867886/sampled GBPUSD -0.2182% traded at $1.6496, little changed from $1.6503 on Tuesday.
Data on U.S. durable-goods orders for July are set for release at 8:30 a.m. Eastern and are expected to show a 2.5% rise after falling 1.9% in June.
William L. Watts is a reporter for MarketWatch in Frankfurt.
0 件のコメント:
コメントを投稿