The Australian dollar declined today, falling for the third straight session, as the renewed concerns about Europe’s sovereign debt crisis sapped investors’ demand for
Yield on the Italian 10-year bonds rose to 7.073 percent yesterday. The 7.0 percent was the level that forced Greece, Ireland and Portugal to seek aid. Spain plans to auction â¬4 billion in bonds tomorrow.
The minutes of the Reserve Bank of Australia monetary policy meeting were released yesterday. The RBA lowered the main interest rate by 25 basis points to 4.5 percent and it could be expected that the minutes wouldn’t be particularly optimistic. And they weren’t as the central bank explained its decision:
The case for an easing in policy was that there had clearly been material changes to the recent course of, and outlook for, underlying inflation over recent months, while the downside risks for the global economy had increased.
The RBA suggested that an increase of the interest rates is possible in the medium term if the global economy wouldn’t worsen considerably. Yet for now easing is appropriate, according to the opinion of the bank.
AUD/USD fell from 1.0176 to 1.0068 as of 6:34 GMT today. EUR/AUD was up from 1.3298 to 1.3352, while AUD/JPY went down from 78.38 to 77.53.
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