Dollar drops below ¥100

Story link: Dollar drops below ¥100

The US dollar continued its declines on Thursday as it hit another new low versus the euro, dropped below ¥100 for the first time since 1995, and pulled nearly even versus the Swiss franc.

The new declines for the greenback came after the announcement that lenders will seize the asses of a mortgage bond fund belonging to the Carlyle Group after it defaulted on over $16.5 billion in debt, while the dollar was also hurt by a decline in retail sales in t he US in February when a gain had been expected.

Some of those losses were recovered after Standard and Poor’s said that it sees the end of subprime-related losses, at least for larger financial institutions and after the US Treasury Secretary again said that the Bush administration supports a strong dollar.

After going as low as a new record $1.5624 to the euro, the dollar had recovered to $1.5568 to the euro by just past noon in New York.

It took just ¥99.77 to buy a dollar before the dollar came back to ¥100.8800, while at the same time it took SFr1.0133 to buy a dollar after the franc gained to SFr1.0045 to the dollar.

Besides gaining on the dollar, the yen was also higher in relation to the euro, trading at ¥156.71 before falling back to ¥157.0549 to the euro.

The pound gained on both the US dollar and the euro, with the greenback trading at $2.0306 to the pound while it cost 76.67p to buy a euro in midday trade in New York after rising to 76.58p to the shared currency earlier.