Dollar range bound… German confidence falls… Aussie and NZD continue to slide… US to maintain pressure on Chinese… And Now… Today’s Pfennig!

Good day… Chuck had a rough night, so he decided to stay home and try to get some rest. The Pfennig will be pretty short this morning, as I want to try and get it out as close to the regular time as possible. The currency markets were fairly calm yesterday, with the dollar staying in a pretty tight range before rallying some in early trading this morning.

Come on, do you really believe the Fed is going to raise rates now, or in the near future with the economy teetering on the edge of a deep dark recession? Not a snowball’s chance in you know where! So, that leaves us with jawboning.

There’s been a return to risk aversion overnight, as some news from the United Kingdom has reignited the fears that the banks may still be sitting on a ton of bad debt… Of course, as Pfennig readers, you already know this…

Yesterday, I left you with the thought that the London traders had been buying dollars since they arrived back from their three-day Holiday weekend. The U.S. traders did the same… And I believe profit taking was the order of the day.

The euro hit 1.5820 overnight in Asian trading, but has seen that move erased during the London trading session… I don’t know what the Londoners know that the Asians don’t with regard to euros.

I saw a report on the IFO’s correlation with the euro’s past moves to higher ground… Made sense to me, as strong IFO reports came out right before the euro moved past previous big figures…

I don’t know at this point if this is a true reversal of the dollar rally or a false dawn… But either way… Just to see some chinks in the dollar right about this time is probably a good thing to currency holders!

The U.S. economy is in a recession, and the over-leveraged U.S. consumer won’t be able to ride to the rescue as they have in the past. And I don’t expect the stimulus checks to help much either, as they are way too little too late.

The dollar is a bit softer this morning going into the Jobs Jamboree, and rightly so, given the forecast. However, the dollar is still swinging a mighty hammer and I’m a bit perplexed by this.

With the dollar weakness overnight, gold has bounced back over $5. Oil has pushed back to within spittin’ distance of $119. Could this be the beginning of the next leg up for the commodities against the dollar?