国际英语新闻：Dollar posts biggest rise versus euro

BEIJING, Sept. 1 -- The United States dollar has posted its biggest monthly advance against the euro since the European currency's 1999 debut on evidence economic weakness that began in the U.S. spread and as crude oil prices declined.

    The greenback increased against all of the other major currencies in August, climbing for a fifth straight month versus the yen. The pound depreciated the most against the US dollar since 1992, when financier George Soros made 1 billion U.S. dollars breaking the Bank of England's defense of the British currency.

    "The situation in the rest of the world is deteriorating much faster than the market was expecting," said Matthew Strauss, a senior currency strategist in Toronto at RBC Capital Markets Inc, a unit of Canada's biggest bank by assets, in an interview on Bloomberg Television. "The gains in the U.S. dollar were more by default."

The United States dollar has posted its biggest monthly advance against the euro since the European currency's 1999 debut on evidence economic weakness that began in the U.S. spread and as crude oil prices declined.

    The US dollar climbed 6.3 percent to 1.4673 dollars per euro on Friday, from 1.5603 dollars on July 31. It touched 1.4571 dollars last Tuesday, the strongest level since February 14. The U.S. currency added 0.8 percent to 108.80 yen, from 107.91, in the longest stretch of monthly gains since January 2002. The euro fell 5.2 percent to 159.40 yen, from 168.39, the biggest monthly drop since March 2004.

    The ICE futures exchange's Dollar Index, which gauges the greenback against the currencies of six major U.S. trading partners, rose 5.3 percent last month. It reached 77.619 last Tuesday, the highest this year.

    Europe's gross domestic product shrank 0.2 percent in the second quarter, the first contraction since the 15-nation common currency was introduced in 1999, the European Union's statistics office said last month. Annual inflation eased to 3.8 percent in August, from 4 percent the prior month. The ECB tries to keep inflation just below 2 percent.
"There's clearly a downward trend for growth and inflation," said Benedikt Germanier, a currency strategist at UBS AG in Stamford, Connecticut. "That argues for the euro to stay under pressure."

    Traders stepped up bets that the European Central Bank will reduce borrowing costs next year.