In the Asian session, the Euro had earlier dropped to 2-year trough against the U.S. Dollar, but has since steadied and halted the downtrend. Another meeting of E.U. policymakers and finance ministers will begin later today, but investors already have low expectations of a positive outcome. The meeting’s focus will be to work out the details of the last meeting, wherein the leaders agreed to a closer fiscal and banking union; analysts believe that today’s meeting might only draw a spotlight on the limitations of the original plan.
As reported at 10:58 a.m. (JST) in Tokyo, the EUR/USD pair is trading at $1.2283, coming off the low of $1.2225 struck earlier in the session. On Friday, following the U.S. Labor Department’s release of private sector payroll data which confirmed that the jobs situation in the U.S. is far f rom improved, the pair traded at $1.2260. Analysts say that that report confirmed that the debt crisis and global slowdown is weighing more heavily on global growth than originally seen, and could provide the impetus for more Fed easing.
The Euro was also lower against the safe haven Japanese Yen, trading at one point at 97.48 Yen before recovering to 97.92 Yen. Likewise, the greenback had lowered against the Yen, trading at 79.64 Yen off last Thursday’s 2-week peak of 80.099 Yen.