Dollar heads for weekly gains, after Fed comments

The dollar is heading towards its best week in a month today, Friday, as statements by Federal Reserve officials and stronger-than-expected retail sales data curbed the decline in the US currency after signs of declining inflation.

According to Reuters, it was also helped by the Thursday night drop in the pound sterling, by 0.4 percent, after a British budget for tax increases and spending cuts frustrated investors.

James Bullard, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, was the latest official in the Federal Reserve (the US central bank) to seek to limit the ceiling of market ambitions to stop raising interest rates, saying that even under cautious assumptions, the interest rate for overnight lending It should be raised to between 5.0 and 5.25 percent at least to curb inflation, up from 3.75 and 4.0 percent now.

He added that the most pessimistic assumptions are moving in the direction of an increase of more than seven percent

The dollar rose slightly against the yen following Pollard’s remarks, and increased by about 1 percent during the week

It also rose by 0.9 percent against the Australian dollar, to 0.6690 Australian dollar, and is on its way to achieving its first weekly gain against its Australian counterpart since mid-October.

The US dollar index rose by about 0.16 percent so far this week to 106.59, to stabilize after a slight decrease in US inflation last week caused one of the sharpest weekly declines for the dollar.