Kiwi Slumps on Interest Rate Comments

The New Zealand dollar went for a third day of losses today on the Forex market, making this week a biggest drop since mid May, as the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Governor Alan Bollard said that he may cut interest rates this year.

Bollard kept rate unchanged today at the record high 8.25 percent level. It’s kept unchanged since July last year. He also said that the economy slowed down in the first quarter of 2008 and the housing market slumped to 16-year low in April:

Our forecast is consistent with the possibility of a rate cut in the third quarter. We may see markets decide on a softer New Zealand dollar… That’s not a terribly big slump. If we were to see it coming off a lot quicker, that’s the sort of thing that would hurt inflation.

Market analysts believe that the New Zealand interest rate is too high considering the global financial turmoil and that it should be lowered to prevent the hard landing of the country’s economy.

NZD/USD decreased today from 0.7701 to 0.7664 as of 7:27 GMT with a daily low at 0.7647 after dropping more than 100 pips yesterday. NZD/JPY had an insignificant drop today after a major loss yesterday  it went down from 81.04 to 80.99 with a daily minimum at 80.67. AUD/NZD soared to the highest value since December 2001  it grew up from 1.2413 to 1.2458 today with a daily high at 1.2485.

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