USD declines versus yen, euro, pound

USD declines versus yen, euro, pound

Story link: USD declines versus yen, euro, pound

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The US dollar weakened Thursday ahead of the Labor Department’s jobs report for December, due Friday.

The declines also came on a separate report, also from the Labor Department, which showed that while first-time jobless claims fell to 467,000 last week, the total number of individuals receiving unemployment benefits was up to 4.6 million in the week ending 27 December, the most since 1982.

At around 11:30 a.m. in New York the dollar traded at $1.373 to the euro, while it took ¥91.03 to buy a dollar.

At the same time, the yen gained on the euro, trading at ¥125.16 to the shared currency.

The pound, meanwhile, strengthened versus the greenback and the euro after the Bank of England cut interest rates by half a percentage point, to 1.5 percent.

The Bank issued a gloomy assessment of the UK economy along with its rate decision, saying that output will likely continue to decline into the first part of 2009, that consumer and business confidence are down substantially, and that trade growth will remain weak for some time to come.

In late morning trade in New York, the pound traded at 90.18p to the euro while it took $1.5177 to buy a pound.