U.S. Dollar Unchanged; Trump Says Fed Officials “Don’t have a clue”
Wednesday,
12-Jun-2019
10:42 AM (IST)
The U.S. dollar index was unchanged on Wednesday in Asia after U.S. President Donald Trump said the officials of the Federal Reserve “don’t have a clue” on rates. Overnight, Trump tweeted that the euro and other currencies are undervalued against the dollar, “putting the U.S. at a big disadvantage. The Fed Interest rate way too high, added to ridiculous quantitative tightening! They don’t have a clue!”’ Trump also said in a separate tweet that the U.S. has low inflation, calling it “a beautiful thing.” The U.S. dollar index that tracks the greenback against a basket of other currencies was unchanged at 96.645 by 11:45 PM ET (03:45 GMT). Traders have been speculating on the possibility of the central bank cutting rates this year due to slowing inflation and rising trade tensions after Fed Chair Jerome Powell signalled the bank would “act as appropriate to sustain the expansion, with a strong labor market and inflation near our symmetric 2% objective.” The Fed will hold its next policy meeting on June 18-19 and is expected to keep rates unchanged. The USD/CNY pair was up 0.07% to 6.9154. Citing unnamed traders, Reuters reported that the People’s Bank of China will inject 35 billion yuan ($5.06 billion) through open market operations on Wednesday. The central bank is injecting 15 billion yuan through seven-day reverse bond repurchase agreements and 20 billion yuan through 28-day reverse repos, according to the report. The USD/JPY pair was down 0.02% to 108.46. The AUD/USD pair and the NZD/USD pair were both down 0.2%.
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