The Australian dollar slipped lower today, with the market wary that it may slump through the historic record low it set last week. Below there we should get a pretty quick move toward US 50 cents, which I think is on the way.
Some commentators attribute the weakness to the current political climate in Australia.
St George Bank chief economist Steve Ryan said the changes in the currency's value reflected the swings in the federal government's ratings surprisingly closely since it came to office in March 1996. The link between the previous Labor government's popularity and the Australian dollar was also very strong, he said. Mr Bull said the Asian regional currencies remained weak today. Japan's looking pretty bad today, the whole regional area is looking pretty soft so that tends to feed through to the Australian dollar and that tends to see us do worse. On the Reserve Bank Trade Weighted Index at 1200 AEDT the Australian dollar was 48.1 points, compared with yesterday's close of 48.2 points.