USD Losses Accelerate

The beleaguered dollar found no reprieve against the majors, with the accelerated selling pushing the currency to fresh all-time lows against the euro, Swiss franc, 24-year lows versus the Aussie and 3-year lows versus the yen. Underscoring the greenback’s weakness has been the continued deterioration in US economic reports, raising fears of an imminent recession and reaffirming the Fed’s need for further aggressive monetary policy easing over the coming months. The reports today included January PCE, consumption, personal income, February Chicago PMI and the University of Michigan sentiment survey. Inflation remains firm as the January PCE price index edged higher with the monthly figure ticking up to 0.4% from 0.2% and 3.7% versus 3.5% a year earlier. The core PCE price index firmed to 0.3% m/m and 2.2% y/y. Personal consumption was flat in January and personal income eased to 0.3%, down from 0.5%. Boding poorly for the economy and the greenback was a dismal February Chicago PMI report, which fell sharply to 44.5, far greater than the expected decline to 49.7 from 51.5 from January – beneath the key 50-level. However, the University of Michigan sentiment survey in February fell by slightly less than estimates, declining to 70.8 instead of forecasts for a fall to 70 from 78.4 a month earlier. Central bank policy decisions and US economic data will dominate the headlines next week. The ECB, BoE, BoC, BoJ and RBA are scheduled to announce policy decisions, with the Reserve Bank of Australia seen tightening rates by 25-basis points to 7.25%. The key highlight from the US will be Friday’s labor report, with the unemployment rate for February expected to edge higher to 5.0% from 4.9% and non-farm payrolls reversing the 17k jobs contraction from January, growing by 35k.