US DollarThe fundamentals this week were negative for the US dollar, weakening the currency against some major counterparts, but performance of the greenback wasn’t that bad, considering all the pressure to the downside.
There were plenty of bad new for the dollar this week. Bad housing data, rising unemployment claims and slower that expected growth of the US economy. The week ended with the speech of Ben Bernanke, who hinted at possibility of additional stimulus without detailing an actual plan.
The dollar was dragged down by the unfavorable fundamentals and fell against the euro and commodity currencies (including the currencies of Canada, Australia and New Zealand). On the other hand, the dollar gained against the franc and rallied versus the yen before losing its gains by the end of the week as there aren’t many choices for investors who need a safe currency, but afraid of interventions of Japan and Switzerland. The pound also fell against the greenback as Britain has its own problems that erase attractiveness of the nation’s currency.
Next week may also be hard for the dollar. Analysts predict another unfavorable report about hosing and are pessimistic about employment data.
EUR/USD climbed from 1.4376 to 1.4498, while during the week it dropped to 1.4327. USD/CHF climbed from 0.7904 to 0.8058 and reached the daily high of 0.8157. AUD/USD surged from 1.0380 to 1.0569.
If you have any questions, comments or opinions regarding the US Dollar, feel free to post them using the commentary form below.
Earlier News About the US Dollar:
* Dollar Drops After Bernanke Speech & GDP Report (2011-08-26)
* Will Bernanke Announce QE3? Will Dollar Decline? (2011-08-25)
* Dollar Gains Before Bernanke Speech (2011-08-24)
* Dollar Falls on China's & Europe's Manufacturing (2011-08-23)
* Dollar Rises While Traders Afraid of Recession (2011-08-18)
Great Britain poundThe Great Britain pound weakened against the Japanese yen and slowed its advance versus the US dollar after the report showed the UK economy grew with slower pace in the second quarter.
The revised figure for growth of UK gross domestic product in the second quarter of 2011 was 0.2 percent, the same as in the preliminary estimate. It indicates slower expansion, compared to 0.5 percent growth in the first quarter. The report also mentioned that several special events affected Britain’s economy in Q2: the additional April public holiday, the royal wedding and the aftereffects of the Japanese tsunami.
GBP/JPY fell from 126.12 to 125.68 today as of 9:24 GMT and touched the daily low of 125.41 earlier. GBP/USD climbed from 1.6278 to 1.6332.
If you have any questions, comments or opinions regarding the Great Britain Pound, feel free to post them using the commentary form below.
Earlier News About the Great Britain Pound:
* GBP Falls vs. EUR with Consumer Confidence & Retail Sales (2011-08-25)
* Pound Rises as Inflation Accelerates (2011-08-16)
* Osborne Refuses Review Spending Cuts, Boosting Pound (2011-08-12)
* Pound Drops with Higher Trade Deficit (2011-08-09)
* Pound Weakens on Worsening Consumer Sentiment (2011-07-21)
EuroThe euro fell against the US dollar for the second day and erased gains versus the Swiss franc today as investors are less willing to buy the currency amid signs of problems in Europe and concerns of global economic slowdown.
The decline of consumer confidence in Germany had its negative impact on the shared European currency. GfK stated that German consumer confidence fell from 5.3 to 5.2 this month and wrote in the report:
Economic expectations virtually collapsed in August, and in light of this, there has also been a moderate drop in Germans’ income expectations.
The euro also weakened on the speculation European lawmakers will extend the ban on short sales.
The global weren’t very supportive for the euro either as rising unemployment claims worsened sentiment of traders. Jobless claims in the US rose to 417,000 last week from the previous week’s revised figure of 412,000. Economists anticipated decrease to 403,000.
EUR/USD fell from 1.4412 to 1.4377 today as of 17:39 GMT. During the day the currency pair reached the high of 1.4474 and the low of 1.4327. EUR/CHF traded at 1.4437 today after earlier it dropped from 1.1465 to 1.1407.
If you have any questions, comments or opinions regarding the Euro, feel free to post them using the commentary form below.
Earlier News About the Euro:
* Euro Drops as Europe's Economic Growth Slows (2011-08-16)
* Euro Weakens as Investors Shun European Bonds (2011-08-02)
* Euro Slids for Second Day on Debt Crisis Concern (2011-07-28)
* Euro Posts Weekly Gain After Two Weeks of Losses (2011-07-23)
* Euro Drops as Optimism Caused by EU Summit Wanes (2011-07-22)
posted at 3:30 pm on August 28, 2011 by Tina Korbe
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Maybe it’s because the state of Texas has weathered higher category hurricanes with far less fuss than that with which the East Coast is presently handling Hurricane Irene, but Texas Gov. Rick Perry refuses to allow the abundant meteorological moments of this week overshadow the economy. Political Ticker reports:
The Texas governor appeared at a county GOP picnic in Des Moines on Saturday. During an exchange with reporters, Perry was asked if the president has been an effective leader during a week that saw two menacing natural disasters: an earthquake and currently the hurricane.
Though Perry would not cast judgment, he did cast his answer in overtly political terms.
“He has been an absolute disaster as a president from the standpoint of our economy. That’s what people are really focused on,” Perry said. “Taking a snapshot of whether or not he’s appropriately dealt with the hurricane – I don’t know yet. I’ll tell you when the hurricane’s over.”
Frankly, the news media ought to take a leaf out of Perry’s book and remember the economy even in the midst of a rocky weather week. Irene has already caused significant inconvenience to coasters (as Ed reported this morning, 3 million are without power) and, even more tragically, has resulted in at least one death, but the media devoted so much time to the earthquake and pre-storm prep (probably because most of the media is on the East Coast) that the president essentially received a free pass on the dismal economic news that also emerged this week. Weekly jobless claims rose by 5,000. Home mortgage applications dropped to a new 15-year low. The CBO’s positive predictions of deficit reduction were based on measures that will never take effect.
Of course the media should have devoted a significant amount of attention to the earthquake and to Hurricane Irene. Natural disasters are without question newsworthy — and, if Hurricane Katrina taught us anything, it’s that it would always be better to have too much media coverage on the front end than a need for endless media coverage on the back end. But it did seem eventually to grow a little out of proportion. I’ll be eager to read any Pew-Project-for-Excellence-in-Journalism-type research that breaks down the exact distribution of the news this week.
At one point, I found myself so perplexed by the hype (The Weather Channel, for example, featured a reporter dramatically bemoaning roughly 25 mph winds — a relatively common day in states like Oklahoma and Kansas!) that I began to brainstorm conspiracy theories. Could it be, I wondered, that the media wants to concoct a more extreme disaster the president could then be demonstrated to have capably “solved,” to have adequately addressed? (Political Ticker’s headline for the story above helps this theory along, actually: “Perry not ready to praise Obama’s handling of Hurricane Irene,” the hed writer writes, as though it’s automatic and obvious that his handling of the storm should be praised. But, then, I tend to read too much into things.)
I don’t really think that, of course. I think it’s August and news is slow — and, anyway, as it turns out, Irene did hit North Carolina with 85 mph winds — winds well worthy of a bit of bemoaning. By the time it hit the Northeast, it was just a tropical storm, but still damaging. Still, throughout the week, I found Fox News’ Shepard Smith’s consistent talk-down of both weather-related events refreshing and I find Perry’s comments particularly apt now.
The Texas governor followed up his pseudo-criticism of the president with an important reminder: State-level leaders, even more so than the president or other national bureaucrats, will bear the brunt of responsibility of cleaning up after the storm.
“Those governors of those states along the Eastern Seaboard are the ones that are actually going to be making the decisions that save the lives, that prepare for this hurricane, that do the search and rescue, and then frankly – do the first part of the recovery,” Perry said.
Yep. Sure, federal-level disasters mandate a federal-level response, but, in America, folks pitch in and help their neighbors in an emergency. They don’t just wait for FEMA to inefficiently address their problems or for the president to glibly gloss over policy-created crises to wax eloquent about matters out of his control. Or, at least, in the America of my imagination, they don’t. Wish that were always the reality, as well.
posted at 2:00 pm on August 28, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
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A few days ago, the New York Times’ Bill Keller proposed asking “tougher questions” of presidential candidates about their faith, causing an uproar in both political and religious circles:
This year’s Republican primary season offers us an important opportunity to confront our scruples about the privacy of faith in public life — and to get over them. We have an unusually large number of candidates, including putative front-runners, who belong to churches that are mysterious or suspect to many Americans. Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman are Mormons, a faith that many conservative Christians have been taught is a “cult” and that many others think is just weird. (Huntsman says he is not “overly religious.”) Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are all affiliated with fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity, which has raised concerns about their respect for the separation of church and state, not to mention the separation of fact and fiction.
posted at 11:25 am on August 29, 2011 by Ed Morrissey
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Greg Hengler captured this emotional moment from the National Geographic special last night that featured George Bush giving his recollection of 9/11 and the days immediately afterward. This clip gives the backstory to Bush’s famous declaration from Ground Zero that the people who destroyed the towers would soon hear from an enraged United States of America. Bush describes the scene as being something from Hell, and that he sensed a “palpable blood lust” to avenge the deaths of thousands of Americans:
I missed the show last night; I was distracted by some unexpected bad news in the family. I have it set to record this evening and will watch it later. If you missed it as well, it airs again tonight on the National Geographic Channel at 9 pm ET and again at midnight. The previews of the one-hour special are very intriguing. Apparently the only voice we will hear, other than from archival video of the events, is Bush’s, as the interviewer’s questions have been removed from the video.
Canadian DollarCanada’s dollar plunged today as demand for the nation’s assets deteriorated because of pessimistic outlook for the economy of the biggest nation’s trading partner — the US.
The depressed mood caused fall of equities and decline of commodities. The MSCI World Index of stocks slumped 1.9 percent, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell as much as 2.1 percent.
There are positive sing, though, that may precede a change of the trend. The S&P/TSX Composite Index rose 0.4 percent. Crude oil, the main export of Canada, rallied 3.2 percent to $81.82 per barrel. Yield on the two-year government bonds fell five basis points to 0.81 percent.
USD/CAD jumped from 0.9771 to 0.9921 as of 19:19 GMT today. EUR/CAD advanced from 1.4044 to 1.4088 after reaching the intraday high of 1.4174. CAD/JPY fell from 78.70 to 77.38 and declined during the day to 76.82, the lowest level since March 2009.
If you have any questions, comments or opinions regarding the Canadian Dollar, feel free to post them using the commentary form below.
Earlier News About the Canadian Dollar:
Canadian Dollar Falls Along with Other Commodity Currencies (2011-08-02)
Loonie Declines as Economy Contracts (2011-07-29)
CAD Sets New Multi-Year Record on US Crisis Expectations (2011-07-26)
Canadian Inflation Slows, Loonie Retreats (2011-07-22)
CAD Reaches Three-Year High vs. USD (2011-07-22)
This entry was posted on TopForexNews on Wednesday, August 10th, 2011 at 7:19 pm and is filed under Canadian Dollar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
posted at 10:41 pm on August 10, 2011 by Allahpundit printer-friendly
“President Barack Obama is getting hammered on all sides for a stumbling U.S. economy and his uneven response to it, raising pressure on him to take steps to create jobs or risk being ousted in next year’s election…
“He received negative reviews from pundits for a speech on Monday that offered no new policy ideas and failed to cushion a steep sell-off on Wall Street…
“David Yepsen, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University, said a host of problems is playing on Americans’ minds, from weak job growth, and slumping markets to the recent deaths of 30 American troops in Afghanistan, a war that is increasingly unpopular.
“‘There’s that feeling, that things are out of control, that we’re not on top of this anymore,’ Yepson said.”
***
“Gary Pearce, a Democratic strategist in North Carolina, a swing state Mr Obama is likely to struggle to retain in 2012, said: ‘Democrats are worried. He looks weak, he doesn’t say anything that grabs you, and people are looking for some kind of magic.’
“He said some activists were asking ‘do we need someone tougher to fight the tea party?’ ‘You see a yearning for a Bill Clinton-type approach and Hillary would reflect that. Obama is just a different political animal, he is a low-key guy,’ he added.”
***
“All that remains of the great hopes Americans and the world had pinned on Obama, inspired by his stirring campaign speeches about change and renewal, is a battlefield of unsatisfactory and contradictory compromises. Obama, who just turned 50 and was once a symbol of youthful change, suddenly seems old and worn out, as gray as his hair has become…
“The clash with the Tea Party has highlighted Obama’s shortcomings. His opponents have everything he seems to lack. They are loud, confident and uncompromising, sticking to their principles while he repeatedly hesitates and delays. In the US midterm elections, dozens of Tea Party candidates managed to get elected to Congress by capitalizing on the rage of people who Obama had failed to connect with…
“It is now clear that Obama is simply not the man to help conflicting parties out of entrenched positions or give new impetus to an alliance. He instinctively leans toward measured, often delayed reactions, leaving his promises of change to fall by the wayside.”
***
“‘We just wish he’d be more of a fighter,’ said one influential Democrat with a grimace. Another agreed: ‘You can’t blame him for everything. I just wish he would come across more forceful at times, but that is not the dude’s style. Detached hurts you when things are sour. You need some of Clinton’s ‘I feel your pain’ compassion.’…
“Obama’s response on Monday to Friday’s Standard & Poor’s downgrade and to the 22 Navy Seal commandos and 8 other soldiers killed by a Taliban rocket-propelled grenade in Afghanistan was once more too little, too late. It was just like his belated, ineffectual response on the BP oil spill and his reaction to the would-be Christmas Day bomber; it took him three days on vacation in Hawaii to speak about the terrorist incident when the country was scared about national security, and then he spent the next week callously shuttling from the podium to the golf course…
“His withholding and reactive nature has made him seem strangely irrelevant in Washington, trapped by his own temperament. He doesn’t lead, and he doesn’t understand why we don’t feel led.”
WASHINGTON: Barely one in four Americans feels confident that the Obama government can fix America's economic problems with a large majority agreeing that the policymaking process in Washington is unstable and ineffective, according to a new poll.
As many as 46 percent of registered voters say they plan to vote against President Barack Obama next year, versus 21 percent who say they will definitely vote for the president and 33 percent who say they will consider giving him another term, a Washington Post poll released on Wednesday said.
The poll underscores the damage caused to Obama and both Republicans and Democrats by the long standoff over the debt ceiling and the weakened economy, the influential US daily said.
The results could have significant implications for both parties, although the anger appears directed evenly between the two parties, as record numbers of Americans now say they are interested in new congressional representation when they vote in November 2012, it said.
Only 26 percent of respondents in the poll said they were confident that leaders in Washington could actually solve the economic problems facing the country.
Fifty-two percent of respondents to the Post poll said they believe Standard & Poor's decision to downgrade its rating on the US debt was a fair assessment, with 71 percent saying they thought S&P's assessment of the American political system as "less stable, less effective and less predictable" was fair.
Among those who believe that Washington is focused on the wrong issues, 30 percent blame Obama and Democrats, 30 percent blame Republicans and 32 percent blame both sides equally.
Confidence in Obama to make the right decisions for the country's economic future is down 10 points to 33 percent since January. Confidence in Congressional Republicans, which was at 35 percent in January, has dropped to 18 percent.
Obama's overall job ratings sit at 44 percent approval and 46 percent disapproval in the new poll, both numerically down from three weeks ago, when he was at 47 and 48 percent, respectively.
However, the poll found despite growing disillusionment with the political situation, 77 percent of Americans agree with this statement: "Whatever its faults, the United States still has the best system of government in the world." That number is unmoved from October 2010.
posted at 10:06 pm on August 10, 2011 by Allahpundit printer-friendly
As bad as that sounds, you need to know that this column was written as a faux AP news article to appreciate its true horror. So desperate is the left’s intelligentsia to see Obama fulfill his promise as redeemer of liberal dreams that they’ve given up analysis and taken to fanfic instead.
This guy may very well have action figures of Obama and Boehner stashed away in his home.
Washington (AP) — It was a news conference the likes of which the White House had never seen. President Obama stood in the East Room, flanked by the House speaker, John Boehner; the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell; the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid; and the House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi. The president asked Mr. Boehner to speak first:
“My fellow Americans,” the Ohio Republican began. “We have just concluded a meeting with the president, prompted by this moment of extraordinary economic peril. Our party, as you know, is convinced that the main reason for our economic decline is that we have too much debt, that government has grown too big and that taxes and regulations are choking our dynamism. But I have to acknowledge that, over the years, our party has contributed to this debt burden and government spending binge. We are not innocent, and, therefore, we owe the country a strategy for governing and for fixing a problem that we helped to create — instead of just blocking the president. The G.O.P. is better than that and has more to offer the nation. Therefore, we have informed the president that our legislators are ready to reopen negotiations immediately on a ‘Grand Bargain’ to address all these debt issues once and for all and that everything will be on the table from our side — including tax reform that closes loopholes and eliminates wasteful subsidies, and, if need be, tax increases. To those who voted for us, rest assured that we will bring our conservative values to these negotiations and an emphasis on markets and meritocracies, but also a spirit of compromise and a recognition that both sides will have to bend if we are going to get the kind of comprehensive budget agreement the country needs. To my Tea Party colleagues, I say: thank you. Your passion helped spur the nation to action, but the country cannot be governed, and our future secured, by bowing solely to the passions of any single group — liberal or conservative. I know that the Tea Party activists are true patriots and they will work with us as well. President Obama: Let’s fix the country together and then compete in 2012 over who can best manage a growing pie rather than a shrinking one.”
And so it came to be that John Boehner became a centrist Democrat and repudiated the core constituency that made him Speaker. After that comes a “warm embrace” between Obama and Boehner and a Grand Bargain very much along the lines of Tom Friedman’s (and Obama’s) own policy preferences before the column ends: “At that point, all five leaders shook hands and retreated into the Oval Office. It was exactly 9:29 a.m. One minute later, the New York Stock Exchange opened. The Dow was up 1,223 points at the open — an all-time record.” Apart from a few days in late 2008, when the Dow was insanely volatile due to the financial crisis and TARP, the biggest gain it’s ever made was 499 points. Such is the awesomeness of the Friedman platform that, if only congressional leaders would endorse it, we’d shatter the all-time one-day record on Wall Street in a burst of green, pro-ChiCom, “effective government” exuberance. They pay Friedman hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to write this stuff.
I almost feel guilty making you read it. Here, here’s a video of the greatest hitter of all time taking batting practice to try to redeem this post.
Australian dollarThe Australian dollar resumed its movement down after the yesterday’s gains as consumer sentiment declined this month, reducing attractiveness of the nation’s currency.
The Westpac-Melbourne Institute Consumer Sentiment index fell 3.5 percent in August from July. This declined followed the drop by 8.3 percent in July. The Aussie (the nickname of the Australian currency) also weakened as the pledge of the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates stable hasn’t reduced pessimism among Forex traders.
AUD/USD retreated from 1.0353 to 1.0343 as of 11:51 GMT after jumping to 1.0414 today. AUD/JPY fell from 79.66 to 79.15, following the advance to 80.34.
If you have any questions, comments or opinions regarding the Australian Dollar, feel free to post them using the commentary form below.
Earlier News About the Australian Dollar:
Australian Dollar Attempts Stop Decline, Fails (2011-08-09)
Eighth Session of Suffering for Aussie (2011-08-08)
AUD Down on Economic Outlook Revision (2011-08-05)
Australian Dollar Continues Its Correction on Weak Retail Sales (2011-08-03)
AUD Surges Against Everything on Higher Inflation Numbers (2011-07-27)
This entry was posted on TopForexNews on Wednesday, August 10th, 2011 at 11:51 am and is filed under Australian Dollar. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the en
Kanon Wakeshima (分島 花音) is a Japanese singer and cellist. Produced by Mana, Wakeshima debuted under the DefStar Records label on May 28, 2008 with the single "Still Doll", the ending theme for the anime adaptation of the manga series Vampire Knight. She also provided the voice for a maid that appears in the eighth episode of the series. Wakeshima's second single "Suna no Oshiro", released on November 12, 2008, was used as the ending theme for the series' second season (subtitled Guilty). | She was nominated for a Best Newcomer award for 2008 in the fourth annual Shojo Beat Music Awards, nominees of which are determined by surveying "record companies, music journalists, music experts, and music fans".
posted at 11:25 am on August 10, 2011 by Ed Morrissey printer-friendly
Reason TV takes a close look at the issue of handgun rights and carry permits in California, one of the few “may-issue” states left in the nation. County sheriffs may issue or deny permits at their discretion, and as the video states, they don’t usually approve applications from most law-abiding citizens. That forces people like Sam Wolanyk to carry unloaded weapons openly, which has the state legislature in a lather — and people debating the nature of the Constitutional right to keep and bear arms, or in this case, bare arms
As most Hot Air readers know, I have a carry permit in Minnesota, although even some people in this state don’t realize that the permit doesn’t restrict me to concealed carry. I can open-carry if I like. Normally, I don’t like, although I support those who do. To me, open carry is unnecessarily provocative, plus it marks me as a primary target if, God forbid, I end up in a dangerous situation where it becomes an issue. Police officers carry openly because it’s part of their job, and if carry permit training teaches anything valuable (it teaches many valuable lessons, of course), it’s that a carry permit is not a Junior G-Man badge. I have it for my own personal safety, for specific as well as general reasons.
I’d take an even dimmer view of open carry of unloaded weapons — an unloaded gun provides all the provocation with none of the immediate defense capacity — but in this case, it’s instructive. The state of California wants to ban a practice that presents no immediate threat, conducted by law-abiding citizens with no record, that has produced no shooting incidents. Anti-gun advocates would rather waste time on this than, say, solving the massive budgetary and debt problems the state faces, as well as solving the problem by allowing law-abiding citizens to get concealed-carry permits with a “must-issue” law.
This reaches the point of absurdity near the end of the video, when the author of a bill to ban open carry of unloaded weapons,Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, tells Reason TV that the purpose of the 2nd Amendment is to protect property — which doesn’t include the person himself. That’s actually backwards, even under existing lethal-force-in-self-defense laws. People are not permitted to use lethal force to protect property in California, or Minnesota either, with or without carry permits. (Neither can the police, by the way.) They can only use lethal force of any kind when faced with an immediate threat in which a reasonable person fears for their own life or of “great bodily harm,” which roughly means losing a limb or an eye, not just getting beaten up. All the carry permit allows is the ability to have the lethal force at hand if that situation arises; it doesn’t exempt the permit holder from laws defining lethal force in self-defense. In most cases, and certainly in Minnesota, those laws require a victim to retreat first if possible rather than using the lethal force, sometimes even in their own homes.
It seems that Portantino doesn’t even understand current law in his own state. Why should Californians trust him to amend it in ways that reduce their ability to defend themselves?
Addendum (previously published but still applicable): My late friend Joel Rosenberg literally wrote the book on carry licensing in Minnesota, The Carry Book: Minnesota Edition. Unfortunately Joel passed away before he could complete an edition that looked at the issue nationally, but even if you’re not in Minnesota, there is a ton of good advice for those who want to pursue carry licenses and handle firearms. My particular favorite chapter of the book is titled, “Cowardice 201: A PhD Seminar in Advanced Staying Out of Trouble,” in which Joel reveals that the true secret of karate is to run faster than everyone else. Self-defense starts with keeping out of situations where you will likely find yourself threatened. Joel’s book is a sobering read, literally and figuratively
