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The yen was up sharply on Thursday as fears over the US subprime lending crisis spread world wide.
There was also tension over the strength of the euro and its potential to damage exports from the euro-zone.
The dollar went as low as 118.53 yen in Thurday’s trading offsetting any of Wednesday’s gains.
Meanwhile, the euro was down to 1.3727 compared to 1.3799 on Wednesday, nearly at its lowest rate of trading this week. The euro-zone was worth 162.74 yen compared to 164.81 the day before and the British pound was down to 2.0275 from 2.0359.
The dollar was worth 1.1950 Swiss francs compared to 1.1952 late on Wednesday.
The Canadian dollar was also down against its US counterpary, falling to a nine day low of 1.0642. The Canadian dollar now looks unlikely to reach parity with the US dollar, as had been feared.
Meanwhile, there was bad news for the United States jobs market on Thursday. There was a 7,000 hike in jobless claims last week to a total of 316,000, compared to the expected figure of 310,000.
The picture over the last four weeks, however, doesn’t look as grave with a hike of only 1,750 new jobless claims.
Finally, US president George Bush moved to ease housing fears in the United States on Thursday as he claimed that the housing market there is heading for a soft landing.
However, he refused to comment on one of the biggest concerns, the crisis in the subprime lending market. He said the government would try to help homeowners struggling with repayments but would not provide direct grants to home owners.
05:56
Posted on Aug-10-2007
