US job losses hurt USD, yen

The US dollar and the yen weakened Friday on more bad news for working people in the United States and after US President Barack Obama said Thursday that a failure by Congress to pass his economic stimulus package would be catastrophic for the US economy.

Some analysts believe that the new jobs data from the US Labor Department, showing that 598,000 more jobs were lost to the US economy in January, could help passage of the stimulus package.

Legislators, some of whom are looking for cuts to the package before they vote for it, could vote on the package as early as later today.

At just before 11:30 a.m. in New York, the yen was lower versus both the euro and the US dollar, with the Japanese currency trading at ¥118.0391 to the shared currency and at ¥91.74 to the greenback, while the dollar lost ground to the euro to trade at $1.2867 to the Eurozone’s currency.

The pound was stronger, building on Thursday’s gains after the Bank of England cut UK interest rates to 1 percent.

In late morning trade in New York, the pound traded at 87.2p to the euro while it took $1.4756 to buy a pound.

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