Euro, Yen Feeling Political Pressure

During the Asian trading session, the common currency Euro had slipped to a 2-week trough against its main rival the U.S. Dollar, and continues to edge off the 15-month peak struck on February 1st as markets take time to digest the ramifications of last week’s political dissension in Spain and Italy and comments made by the ECB chief, Mario Draghi. As reported at 11:11 a.m. (JST) in Tokyo, the EUR/USD pair was trading at a session low of $1.3325 before recovering more recently to $1.3369. Since the beginning of the month, the Euro has lost about 2.5% on the greenback, the downtrend driven in part by investors’ expectations that the ECB might curtail the Euro’s rise so as not to detrimentally impact the fragile economic recovery.

The Japanese Yen, meanwhile, has gained support from comments made by Taro Aso, Japan’s Finance Minister, who said that the currency’s recent remarkable drop has perhaps been more than the government intended in its quest to satisfy its 2% inflation target. Those comments suggested to some analysts and market players that this week’s Bank of Japan meeting won’t be as cut and dried as previously thought, especially given that the G20 summit is now looming. The USD/JPY pair was trading at 92.46 Yen, close to Friday’s 1-week trough of 92.17, while the EUR/JPY pair was trading at 123.57, not far from 123.43, a 1-week low struck last Friday.