The dollar had its biggest decline against the euro in eight weeks as a drop in US payrolls damped optimism about the economy.
The ouster of Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and White House economic adviser Larry Lindsey trimmed the dollar's losses.
Against the euro, the dollar weakened to US$1.0094 per euro, the biggest drop since Oct. 9, at 5:35pm on Friday in New York from US$1.0005 Thursday. It also had its largest decline against the yen since Nov. 8, sinking to Japanese yen 123.51 from Japanese yen 124.92.
In the week, the US currency lost 1.5 against the euro, its first weekly decline in four, extending its decline this year 13.5 percent. The dollar gained 0.8 percent against the yen in the week, bringing its loss in the year to 6.6 percent.
Demand for dollars slowed after the government said payrolls fell by 40,000 in November, the biggest drop since February and the jobless rate rose to 6 percent, the highest since April.
The yen's gains Friday halt a tumble earlier in the week.
Three Japanese officials suggested they want a weaker currency to trigger an export-led economic recovery.
Haruhiko Kuroda, vice finance minister for international affairs, said the yen's drop is "appropriate."
The slump started after Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa said the yen at Japanese yen 150 to Japanese yen 160 per dollar would reflect the state of the world's second-largest economy. A weaker currency may help boost Japan's economy by making its exports more competitive.
"This kind of rhetoric is going to push down the yen," said Haydn Davies, chief economist in London at Barclays Global Investors, which manages about 580 billion euro (US$911 billion). He sold some dollars to buy yen this week because "I don't think it's going to have a long-term impact."
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts