The US dollar traded near two-week high against the euro after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said an increase in inflation expectations is a “significant concern” for the central bank.
An index gauging the greenback against the currencies of six US trading partners rose on Friday for a third day as Bernanke’s comment led traders to raise bets that policy makers will increase borrowing costs later this year. The European Central Bank is forecast by economists to keep its main refinancing rate at a six-year high.
Bernanke “definitely fed into market expectations of a rate hike later this year,” said Brian Dolan, chief currency strategist at FOREX.com, a unit of online currency trading firm Gain Capital in Bedminster, New Jersey. “It gave a boost to the dollar.”
The dollar was little changed at US$1.5441 per euro in Tokyo, after touching US$1.5411 on June 3, the highest level since May 14. The dollar traded at ¥105.21, following a 0.14 percent increase on Friday. The euro was little changed at ¥162.48.
Bernanke cited an increase in indicators that the public expects prices to rise in a speech at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Friday.
The consumer price index rose 3.9 percent for the year ended in April and expectations of inflation five years from now rose to 3.4 percent last month versus 3 percent in January, the Reuters/University of Michigan Survey showed.
Japan has deployed long-range missiles in a southwestern region near China, the Japanese defense minister said yesterday, at a time when ties with Beijing are at their lowest in recent years. The missiles were installed in Kumamoto in the southern region of Kyushu, as Japan is attempting to shore up its military capacity as China steps up naval activity in the East China Sea. “Standoff defense capabilities enable us to counter the threat of enemy forces attempting to invade our country ... while ensuring the safety of our personnel,” Japanese Minister of Defense Shinjiro Koizumi said. “This is an extremely important initiative for
The nation’s fastest supercomputer, Nano 4 (晶創26), is scheduled to be launched in the third quarter, and would be used to train large language models in finance and national defense sectors, the National Center for High-Performance Computing (NCHC) said. The supercomputer, which would operate at about 86.05 petaflops, is being tested at a new cloud computing center in the Southern Taiwan Science Park in Tainan. The exterior of the server cabinet features chip circuitry patterns overlaid with a map of Taiwan, highlighting the nation’s central position in the semiconductor industry. The center also houses Taiwania 2, Taiwania 3, Forerunner 1 and
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