Asian currencies retreated from a 15-month high this week as US lawmakers struggled to agree on budget revisions needed to avert US$607 billion of automatic spending cuts and tax increases in the world’s biggest economy.
The Bloomberg-JPMorgan Asia Dollar Index, having gained in each of the past six months, halted its advance as Malaysia’s ringgit had its worst week since August.
US President Barack Obama on Wednesday said that the global economy remains “soft” and the deadlock in Washington over taxes and spending, the so-called “fiscal cliff,” is holding the US back from leading a strong recovery. The US Federal Reserve meets next week, when the central bank is forecast to increase its asset purchases.
The ringgit slid 0.6 percent this week to 3.0578 per US dollar in Kuala Lumpur, data compiled by Bloomberg show. China’s yuan was little changed this week at 6.2301 per US dollar, while Thailand’s baht and the New Taiwan dollar were steady at 30.68 and NT$29.125 respectively. South Korea’s won strengthened 0.1 percent to 1,081.55. Indonesia’s rupiah fell 0.7 percent to 9,658, the Philippine peso declined 0.1 percent to 40.933 and India’s rupee fell 0.4 percent to 54.4750.
The Asia Dollar Index, which tracks the region’s 10 most active currencies, excluding the yen, fell 0.1 percent. It reached 118.26 on Nov. 30, the highest since September last year.
Meanwhile, European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi said the eurozone’s economy will shrink 0.5 percent this year this year, while Germany’s central bank slashed its growth estimate for next year to 0.4 percent from 1.6 percent predicted in June.
“Draghi’s words mean the recovery will be slower than previously expected, damping exports to Europe,” said Chong Wee-khoon (張偉勤) of Societe Generale SA in Hong Kong. “More regional central banks are getting a bit more aggressive in intervening in the market to protect the recovery in exports.”
The Central Bank of the Philippine on Monday said capital controls may be part of steps to deal with inflows. South Korea’s market regulators are reviewing more curbs after tightening limits on currency forwards last month, South Korean Financial Services Commission chairman Kim Seok-dong said last week.
The ringgit fell the most since the five days ended on Aug. 31. A Malaysian government report on Friday showed exports shrank 3.2 percent in October from a year earlier, following a 2.6 percent increase in September.
India’s rupee erased gains, after reaching a one-month high of 54.045 per US dollar on Thursday. Indian lawmakers this week voted in favor of a government decision to open the retailing sector to the likes of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
In Europe, the euro fell against the US dollar and yen for the first time in four weeks, seeing its biggest one-day decline in a month on Thursday as the ECB joined the Bundesbank in scaling back growth projections.
The US dollar weakened against higher-yielding currencies after the nation’s employment rate unexpectedly fell to an almost four-year low. The euro fell 0.5 percent to US$1.2927 in New York for the first weekly loss since Nov. 9. It touched US$1.2877 on Friday, the weakest since Nov. 23. The euro declined 0.4 percent to ¥106.67, reaching ¥106.12 on Friday, the lowest in more than a week. The yen was little changed versus the US dollar at ¥82.49.
The euro has lost 2.5 percent this year, the second-worst performer among the 10 developed-market currencies tracked by Bloomberg Correlation-Weighted Indexes. The yen slid 9.5 percent and the US dollar fell 2.2 percent.
The Dollar Index, which IntercontinentalExchange Inc uses to track the greenback against currencies of six US trading partners, rose 0.3 percent to 80.412, for its first gain in three weeks.
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
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Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained