The Australian Dollar continued its decline against the Pound and weakened against the majority of its most traded peers on Wednesday following comments made by two US Federal Reserve policy makers.
Charles Plosser, who is President of the Philadelphia branch of the Federal Reserve and Richard Fisher the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, both revealed that they want the US Central Bank to continue with its plans to taper its bond buying programme despite the release of disappointing data from last week.
Yesterday better than expected US retail sales data went some way to easing concerns that the US economy was not as strong as thought. As a result the comments the commodity based currencies such as the ‘Aussie’, New Zealand and Canadian Dollars fell. Emerging market currencies such as the South African Rand were also hit.
Over the past few days the ‘Aussie’ has been at the mercy of international factors. Thursday however will see attention revert back to domestic issues as December’s unemployment data is released. Economists are forecasting that the report will show that the Australian economy created 10,000 jobs in December and that the overall unemployment rate remained at 5.8%. If unemployment shows a rise then speculation will increase that the Reserve Bank could cut interest rates.
If the report comes in weaker-than-expected we can expect to see the ‘Aussie’ fall further and to perhaps see the GBP/AUD rate breach the 1.85 level.
Current Australian Dollar Exchange (AUD) Rates
[table width=”100%” colwidth=”50|50|50|50|50″ colalign=”left|left|left|left|left”]
Currency, ,Currency,Rate ,
Australian Dollar,
,US Dollar,0.8892 ,
Australian Dollar,,British Pound,0.5419 ,
Australian Dollar,,Euro,0.6532 ,
Australian Dollar,,New Zealand Dollar,1.0654 ,
US Dollar,,Australian Dollar,1.1242 ,
Euro,,Australian Dollar,1.5301 ,
Pound Sterling,,Australian Dollar,1.8445 ,
[/table]
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