In the currency market, the dollar firmed for a third straight day against the euro. Late Thursday, the euro was trading at $1.5501 vs. $1.564 on Wednesday.

The pace of inflation in the Euro zone accelerated in March to its fatest pace since 1992, reports The New York Times.

Eurostat, the European statistics agency, said prices rose in March at a 3.5 percent annual rate in the 15 countries that share the euro, the highest rate since June 1992. The rate in February was 3.3 percent, which had itself been a record. Inflation is running far above the European Central Bank’s 2 percent guideline.

The concern about rising prices is not confined to the euro zone. In a speech on Monday, the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, noted that “food prices on world markets are more than 50 percent higher, and oil prices two-thirds higher, than…