Forex focus: even the major expat currencies are suffering - Daily Telegraph
The yuan has softened as a result, with last month's fall being the worst performance it has seen for five years.
Australia has been helped by surprisingly good growth figures posted this month.
"The Aussie dollar is more tied to China than anybody else's currency," says Jeremy Cook of World First, "and will remain so as long as China maintains its position as the manufacturing powerhouse it has become.
"However all these currencies are influenced by China. As China's factories slow, so does their appetite for raw material imports and this hurts the Australian economy and all the rest. Without growth these currencies will remain unloved."
These Antipodean currencies, along with Canada, are seen as commodity currencies as most of their output comes from mining of various resources including gold, minerals and oil along with soft commodities such as wheat and wool.
They've been booming since the turn of the century but this year has been rough on them, offering some desperately needed respite to expats relying on an income in sterling. It's not just China which is cooling down, India too has seen the brakes put on its booming expansion. And, of course, Europe is still one of their main trading partners.
Unlike the UK and much of Europe, they have plenty of options to ease the situation. One possible solution, if the politicians are anxious to boost their exchange rate and attract investors, is to increase the interest rate.
Josh Ferry Woodard of TorFX believes that both Canada and South Africa could hike their rates this year which will strengthen their currency. Meanwhile, Canada's poor domestic output for the first three months of the year dealt a severe blow to optimism surrounding the Loonie.
He says: "With 18-month highs in sight, the pound has been performing better against the Canadian dollar, in relative terms, than any of the other major currencies.
"There is a possibility that the damage done to the South African economy as a result of the euro crisis could in fact lead to an interest rate increase later on in the year to combat domestic inflation which could actually prove to be the catalyst towards a stronger rand."
One of the biggest winners in the currency wars at the moment is the US dollar. Unless they're earning in dollars, expats living in the States will be suffering as the pound has fallen back to within touching distance of 2010's two-year low.
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FOREX-Euro slides as Spain debt worries mount - Reuters
* Euro retreats after Spanish rating downgrade
* Weak Italian, German economic data adds to gloom
* Lack of policy action from Fed hits riskier currencies
* Spain expected to request aid package at weekend: sources
NEW YORK, June 8 (Reuters) - The euro slid on Friday after a three-notch downgrade to Spain's credit rating and signs of economic weakness in Italy and Germany, leaving it vulnerable as concerns increase that the euro zone debt crisis is getting worse.
European Union and German sources told Reuters Spain was expected to make a request over the weekend for an aid package to prop up its troubled banks, highlighting the vulnerability of the country's financial sector.
Rating agency Fitch slashed Spain's credit rating on Thursday, leaving it just two notches short of junk status. It signaled further downgrades could come as the country tries to restructure its troubled banking system.
"There has been little to soothe uncertainty and central bank action this week failed to remove tail risk," said Camilla Sutton, senior currency strategist at Scotia Capital in Toronto. "News flow remains relatively negative."
The euro fell 0.8 percent to a low of $1.2462, retreating from a two-week high of $1.2625 hit on Thursday after a surprise interest rate cut by the Chinese central bank.
More losses would leave the euro vulnerable to a test of the 23-month low of $1.2286 hit on June 1, using Reuters data, after failing to break above chart resistance at $1.2623, the January low.
The euro also took a knock after Italian industrial production fell far more than expected in April and German imports tumbled at their fastest rate in two years, adding to euro zone recession concerns.
The euro briefly came off its lows after China said it would cut fuel prices by nearly 6 percent from Saturday, which some traders saw as another positive step that may help stimulate China's economy.
But some analysts were concerned that by cutting rates on Thursday China might have been looking to pre-empt grim news from Chinese data due out over the weekend.
"The news with the easing measures in China would normally be positive for risk assets but the market is cautious," said Ian Stannard, currency strategist at Morgan Stanley in London.
"Below $1.2290 would leave $1.20/$1.19 in view, but the euro could get some positive surprises on the way that could lead it back up to the $1.26/$1.27 area."
EURO WORRIES
Many analysts said the euro could come under further pressure next week as attention refocuses on political turmoil in Greece before an election on June 17. A victory for anti-bailout parties would raise the possibility of Greece leaving the currency union.
The euro fell 1.1 percent against the yen to 98.93 yen. The safe-haven Japanese currency gained broadly as market sentiment declined, with the dollar losing 0.3 percent to 79.37 yen.
Currencies with more perceived risk were also under pressure after U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke offered no hints of imminent monetary stimulus in his testimony to Congress on Thursday, wrongfooting some market players who had positioned for a dovish statement.
"The recovery (in the euro) we saw in the last few days was not a sustainable one," said Lutz Karpowitz, currency strategist at Commerzbank, who forecast the euro would be around $1.20 by the end of June.
The higher-yielding Australian dollar slipped 0.5 percent against the U.S. currency to US$0.9850.
Thomson Reuters released its monthly foreign exchange trading volumes for May 2012 on Friday. May average daily volume was $154 billion up from $130 billion in April but down from the $161 billion reported in May, 2011.
"Take my money, HBO!": Why you won't be able to watch Game of Thrones online anytime soon in the UK - New Statesman
Take My Money, HBO is a growing online campaign aimed at getting HBO, the American subscriber-TV network and home of the Sopranos, Game of Thrones and Curb Your Enthusiasm, to provide those without American cable, both "cord-cutters" and international audiences, a way to pay directly for the channels HBO streams through its HBOGO online service.
Currently, you can only receive HBOGO – the company's equivalent of BBC's iPlayer – if you subscribe to a participating American cable channel. Which isn't the best thing to tell people who want to move all their TV viewing online, or who don't actually live in America.
There are other ways to get HBO content, of course; you can wait until the DVD box set comes out, or buy it from iTunes once it is released there. But both of those are on a huge delay; the downloads and DVDs for Game of Thrones were finally made available this March, 11 months after the series started airing.
Alternatively, there is piracy. The day after most episodes aired, they were available in HD, for free, on sites like The Pirate Bay.
Clearly, that's not optimal. This comic, from earlier this year, neatly sums up the issues many had: Programs have aired, people are talking about them, but without a 1990s-style TV set-up, you can't actually watch them legally.
Hence, "Take My Money". The site asks users to tweet at HBOGO the amount they would be willing to pay for a subscription to the service; the average suggestiong is around $12 a month, according to TechCrunch
The business rationale at the first instance seems compelling. Digitopoly's Joshua Gans explains:
HBO has 29 million subscribers in the US paying around $10 per month. HBO receives $8 of that. That would seem to suggest that HBO couldn’t lose by offering a $12 per month subscription.
The fear for the company could be that, if they made another way to access their content, the cable companies would reduce their cut of the premium. But as Gans points out, in the US, where cable is the main form of broadband, most will keep a subscription of some sort anyway, and internationally, many have no option to get HBO at all.
The bigger problem is that HBO is far more intricately tied-up in the standard model of TV distribution than they might like to be. For one thing, it is in fact owned by Time Warner, the American broadcasting giant. For another, as Dan Frommer points out, there simply isn't the right infrastructure for such a thing to happen. HBO would have to support every major video game console, Mac OS, Windows, and probably Apple TV just to have a hope of getting on enough TV screens to even pay the money it cost to set up the system, let alone recoup the lost revenue from cancelled subscriptions.
And internationally the situation isn't much better. In the UK, Sky has forked out a reported £150m for a five-year exclusive with HBO; you can bet they wouldn't have paid nearly that much if it was available to anyone paying £10 online.
All of which means that if you are in the small (but likely over-represented in the New Statesman's readership) percentage of the UK population which watches barely any TV except for high-quality US imports, you are likely to have to carry on waiting or pirating for some time. Disruption may come to the market, but unless they are forced to, HBO just aren't going to take your moeny.
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