PhilBen
25th February 2010, 07:25
The Pound Under pressure once again and according to Bloomberg UBS AG have said if the government tackles the country’s debt burden too early the pound could fall below parity with the Euro and drop to 1.05 against the US Dollar, the lowest level against the dollar since the 1980s. “If the next government was to prematurely curb the fiscal deficit after the elections, without the economy reaching a surer footing, the consequences for sterling, financial markets and public confidence would be grave,” Mansoor Mohi-Uddin, chief currency strategist at UBS in Singapore, said today in a research note. The question of when to start cutting Britain’s record deficit is at the centre of the campaign for the general election that Prime Minister Gordon Brown must call within weeks. Mohi-Uddin joins Nobel Prize-winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Robert Solow, who are among 67 economists to support Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s argument that it’s too soon to start cutting the U.K.’s record deficit. They disagreed with 20 economists who attacked Brown’s position in a Feb. 14 letter to the Sunday Times.
The Dollar Figures from the Commerce Department showed yesterday in Washington that sales of new homes in the U.S. unexpectedly fell in January to the lowest level on record, another sign that an extension of a government tax credit may not be enough to increase demand. Purchases declined 11% to an annual pace of 309,000, from a 348,000 pace that was forecast. The median sales price dropped 2.4 % from January 2009 and the supply of unsold homes increased.
The Euro European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said yesterday that Industrial orders unexpectedly rose for a second month in December led by a surge in demand for capital goods such as machinery and equipment. Orders to industrial companies in the 16-nation euro area rose 0.8 % from November, when they gained 2.7 %, the. From the year-earlier month, industrial orders increased 9.5 %, the first annual gain since July 2008.
Major Data out Today
FR PPI
UK Total Business Investment (P)
UK CBI Industrial Trends
UK CBI Distributive Trades
US Durable goods orders
US Durables ex defence
US Durables ex transport
US Initial Claims
NZ Trade Balance
Live IB rates at 8.22am UK
GBP - EURO 1.136
GBP - USD 1.533
GBP - AUD 1.723
EURO – USD 1.349
The Dollar Figures from the Commerce Department showed yesterday in Washington that sales of new homes in the U.S. unexpectedly fell in January to the lowest level on record, another sign that an extension of a government tax credit may not be enough to increase demand. Purchases declined 11% to an annual pace of 309,000, from a 348,000 pace that was forecast. The median sales price dropped 2.4 % from January 2009 and the supply of unsold homes increased.
The Euro European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said yesterday that Industrial orders unexpectedly rose for a second month in December led by a surge in demand for capital goods such as machinery and equipment. Orders to industrial companies in the 16-nation euro area rose 0.8 % from November, when they gained 2.7 %, the. From the year-earlier month, industrial orders increased 9.5 %, the first annual gain since July 2008.
Major Data out Today
FR PPI
UK Total Business Investment (P)
UK CBI Industrial Trends
UK CBI Distributive Trades
US Durable goods orders
US Durables ex defence
US Durables ex transport
US Initial Claims
NZ Trade Balance
Live IB rates at 8.22am UK
GBP - EURO 1.136
GBP - USD 1.533
GBP - AUD 1.723
EURO – USD 1.349