US dollar slumps after Fed minutes

The US dollar fell against other major currencies as investors were digesting the newly-released Federal Reserve minutes for its July policy meeting.

In late New York trading on Thursday, the euro rose to $1.1354 from $1.1291 of the previous session, and the British pound climbed to $1.3152 from $1.3056, Xinhua news agency reported.

The Australian dollar went up to $0.7690 from $0.7647.

The dollar bought 99.95 Japanese yen, lower than 100.21 yen in the previous session. The dollar fell to 0.9552 Swiss francs from 0.9618 Swiss francs, and it inched down to 1.2772 Canadian dollars from 1.2848 Canadian dollars.

The dollar index, which measures the greenback against six major peers, was down 0.59 per cent at 94.159 in late trading, the lowest level in seven weeks.

Fed officials were divided on the timing of raising interest rates this year, with some urging to go soon given the robust labor market and others preferring to wait until the inflation meets target, showed the minutes for the central bank' s latest meeting released on Wednesday.

"Some participants viewed recent economic developments as indicating that labor market conditions were at or close to those consistent with maximum employment and expected that the recent progress in reaching the committee's inflation objective would continue, even with further steps to gradually remove monetary policy accommodation," said the minutes.

It also showed that "several preferred to defer another increase in the federal funds rate until they were more confident that inflation was moving closer to 2 per cent on a sustained basis."

--IANS

pgh/