The Dollar’s Decline Continues To Break Records, Next Fed Cut Looking Deeper And Deeper

The dollar can’t seem to catch a break. The beleaguered currency marked yet another momentous drop against most of its liquid counterparts, chalking up its biggest three day selloff in four years. And, leading that charge was the EUR/USD, which marked a fresh record high for the third consecutive session. Feeding the insatiable desire to sell dollars was yet another round of scheduled and unscheduled disappointing fundamentals. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke’s testimony before the House today more or less covered the same dour highlights from yesterday’s delivery to the Senate. The few notable differences between the two speeches came from the Q&A. In response to one particular question, the central banker suggested that it would be “fair” to suggest it is tougher for the Fed to respond now than it was during the last recession back in 2001. This may have been taken to mean by some that the economy is heading for another recession; but what Bernanke was actually referring to was the unwanted mix of quickly receding economic growth and the elevated level of front-line inflation. Addressing the dollar specifically, the Fed Chairman further said the policy group was monitoring its record breaking decline, yet he suggested he still believed foreign investors still had confidence in the world’s largest economy. While Bernanke continued to talk up the struggling greenback, the market was also absorbing disappointing readings from the fourth quarter GDP revisions and a round of second tier employment numbers. Annualized growth shirked forecasts for annualized expansion to accelerate slightly by holding at its five-year low 0.6 percent clip. Noteworthy shifts from the sector breakdown were downward revisions to personal consumption, business investment, commercial construction and government spending. In fact, the only positive change came from exports whose 0.9 percent contribution to GDP is barely keeping the US economy above water. Elsewhere on the docket, initial jobless claims in the week through February 23rd jumped well beyond the consensus to 373,000 – just off of the two year highs from last month. Pricing in this dour data, Fed Fund futures have moved from fully pricing in a 50 bp rate cut on March 18th to a 36 percent chance of 75 bps. ....more....