Euro Plunges Further Against Majors After ECB Interest Rate Decision
The European common currency plunged further against major opponents following the announcement of European Central Bank’s interest rate decision in early New York morning trading on Thursday. The European Central Bank today kept its key interest rate unchanged at a record low for the ninth consecutive month to support the economy that is recovering from the worst recession.
In its second meeting of the year, the Governing Council, led by President Jean-Claude Trichet retained the key interest rate at 1%, as expected. The last change in the rate was in May 2009, when the bank cut the rate by 25 basis points to the current level of 1%. The bank had lowered the key interest rate by a total of three and a quarter percentage points since early October 2008.
The Frankfurt-based central bank maintained interest rates on marginal lending facility and deposit facility at their current levels of 1.75% and 0.25%, respectively.
Extending previous session downtrend, the euro declined further against the US dollar and the Japanese yen in New York morning deals today. At present, the euro is trading near new multi-month lows of 124.29 against the yen and 1.3775 versus the greenback, which may be compared to yesterday’s closing values of 126.43 and 1.3895, respectively.
Against its Swiss counterpart, the euro also edged down in today’s New York morning and dropped to a fresh 6-day low of 1.4658 by about 11:00 am ET.
