Dollar Tumbles to ’09 Lows

The greenback slid across the board in the Tuesday session, tumbling to its lowest level of the year against the euro at 1.4321 and a seven month low versus the pound at 1.6590. The dollar remains under pressure amid renewed skepticism over its position as the world’s reserve currency, with comments from Russian President Medvedev reiterating his proposal for a new global currency.

Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher expressed optimism, saying the Fed has been successful in pulling the economy back from the brink and is beginning to see the results from its efforts to support the credit markets. Although he said the US economy is “getting less worse” with time, he believes it is still “not out of the woods” and expects the recovery to be very slow. He did offer a somewhat upbeat assessment, saying consumer confidence was picking up somewhat and retail sales was no longer plunging. Fisher said the aggressive action adopted by the Fed helped stave off the worse of the US downturn.

The US data released earlier in the session was better than expected. The April pending home sales sharply beat expectations for an increase of 0.5% from the March reading at 3.2%, instead posting highest increase since 2001, advancing by 6.7%.