China’s yuan is facing increasing pressure to appreciate because of a widening interest-rate differential, the country’s top currency regulator said in a statement.
Speculative capital is flowing into China disguised as foreign direct investment and trade accounts through “underground money shops,” Yi Gang, head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, said at a briefing in Beijing today.
The [...]

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Greece’s pledge to ramp up planned budget-deficit cuts by half failed to yield commitments of financial assistance from Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, to help solve its financial crisis.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said a meeting tomorrow with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou won’t be “about aid commitments.” Her finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, said the deficit-reduction measures announced in Athens [...]

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Australia’s economy grew last quarter at the fastest pace in almost two years, underscoring the central bank’s decision yesterday to boost borrowing costs for the fourth time in five meetings.
Gross domestic product climbed 0.9 percent from the third quarter, when it gained a revised 0.3 percent, the Bureau of Statistics said in Sydney today. That matched [...]

australia, commodity, economic growth, forex, stock market Hide

While the eyes of the world focus on Greece’s debt crisis, investors in Edinburgh are busy preparing for the U.K. to be next.
Turcan Connell, which caters to rich families, expects the pound to lose between 20 percent and 30 percent against the dollar once investors turn their sights on Britain as the government sells a [...]

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A bipartisan group of 15 U.S. senators Thursday insisted China’s currency practices are effectively a subsidy and urged Commerce Secretary Gary Locke to consider action against Chinese imports.
“There can be no doubt that China’s policy of large-scale intervention in the exchange markets and the significant undervaluation of its currency acts as a subsidy to Chinese [...]

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Feb. 11 (Bloomberg) — Australianemployers added the most workers in more than three years in January, sending the currency surging on speculation the central bank will resume its record round of interest-rate increases.
The number of people employed rose 52,700 from December, the fifth straight monthly gain, the statistics bureau said in Sydney today. The median estimate [...]

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Switzerland’s central bank was seen selling francs in Asian trading time on Friday, sending the euro leaping higher after it hit a 15-month low against the franc and helping it rise above an eight-month trough against the dollar.
The euro has been under relentless selling pressure in the past month on concerns about sovereign debt problems [...]

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FRANKFURT: A European Central Bank meeting on Thursday will be dominated by concerns over debt-ridden Greece and other countries with high public deficits that have pushed the eurozone into its worst-ever crisis.
Economists polled by Dow Jones Newswires expect the ECB’s main interest rate to stay at a record low of one per cent for most [...]

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International markets were supposed to be the place to make money in 2010, but so far have failed to live up to their billing.
From credit issues in Greece, Spain and Ireland to inflation fears in China, investors have been selling rather than buying when it comes to emerging and developed markets.
Despite a rough start, the [...]

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Four strategists offer their views on the key factors that will drive foreign exchange movements here in the next 12 months.
WHILE 2009 is often remembered for the unexpected economic rebound, the period also saw significantly higher volatility in the foreign exchange markets as the selldown in stocks swiftly hit the currency markets full-force.
This year, as [...]

Asian currencies, forex, Indian rupee, investments, Korean won, Philippine peso, predictions, ringgit, rupiah, Singapore dollar, Taiwan dollar Hide