By: Barbara Zigah

Yesterday’s passage of new austerity measures through the Greek Parliament helped to push the Euro to a 3-week high against the U.S. dollar. That leaves one last hurdle for the Greek government to jump, namely today’s implementation vote.

The E.U./IMF has imposed a relatively tight schedule and there is still some uncertainty as to whether or not the Greek government can meet it. If it does, however, that would be the last hurdle for them face in order to obtain the 5th and last tranche bailout payment from the E.U. and IMF.

In the interim, the Euro is also finding additional support from speculation on the European Central Bank’s likely rate increase. That speculation was bolstered by the ECB President’s recent comments.

As reported at 3:02 p.m. (JST) in Tokyo, the Euro was trading against the U.S. Dollar at $1.4498 on the EBS trading platform, an increase of 0.5%. Following the voting, the Euro traded as high as $1.45195, striking a 3-week high. Other high risk currencies benefited from the Greek vote passage, including the Australian and New Zealand Dollars. The Aussie was recently trading up at 1.0732 against the greenback, while the Kiwi was higher at .8294, retreating somewhat from a record fresh high of .8319.