Australian, NZ dollar rise on Fed's unlimited support

The Australian and New Zealand dollars climbed for a third straight session on Tuesday against the greenback which slipped after the US Federal Reserve assured financial markets of infinite support to ease liquidity woes.
The Australian dollar was last up 1.5% at $0.5923, moving away from a December 2002 low of $0.5519 touched on Thursday.
The New Zealand dollar rose 1.19% to $0.5784, bouncing from an 11-year trough of $0.5469 hit last week.
The antipodean central banks have also pledged to buy government bonds as they forayed into quantitative easing but their actions were overtaken by their US counterpart.
Despite recent gains, the Aussie is still down almost 9% in March alone and the kiwi has lost 7.4%.
On Tuesday, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) injected A$6.9 billion ($4.1 billion) into the financial system and bought A$4 billion in government bonds as it looks to blunt the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.
Australian government bond futures gained, with the three-year bond contract up 1 tick at 99.77. The 10-year contract added 3.5 ticks to 99.13.
The RBA has so far been successful in flattening the curve as it aims to keep short-term yields around the cash rate of 0.25%.
A recession - the country's first in nearly three decades - is still inevitable due to emergency lockdowns and travel restrictions.
"We estimate that there will be 814,000 in job losses in the June quarter lifting the unemployment rate to 11.1%," Westpac chief economist Bill Evans said.
"Working through our GDP estimates on an industry basis and acknowledging that output is not always aligned with employment this approach points to a contraction in GDP of 3.5% in the June quarter.
In its latest drastic step, the Fed offered to buy unlimited amounts of assets to steady markets and expanded its mandate to corporate and muni bonds. Some analysts estimate the package could make $4 trillion or more in loans to non-financial firms.
New Zealand said retail banks will offer a six-month principal and interest payment holiday for mortgage holders and small business customers whose incomes have been affected by the economic disruption from COVID-19.