Dollar resumes relentless climb in Asia

The dollar resumed its relentless climb against major currencies on Thursday as wild financial market volatility and worries over tightening liquidity triggered by the coronavirus pandemic sparked an investor flight into cash.
Sterling teetered near the lowest since at least 1985 against the greenback. The Australian dollar skidded to a 17-year low, while the New Zealand dollar crashed to an 11-year low as investors dumped riskier assets.
The euro briefly rose against the dollar and the pound after the European Central Bank announced a 750 billion euro ($817 billion) asset-purchase programme in response to the coronavirus outbreak, but even this effort was overwhelmed by a stampede into the dollar.
Investors are selling what they can to keep their money in dollars due to the unprecedented amount of uncertainty caused by the epidemic, which threatens to paralyse large swathes of the global economy.
"This is similar to what happened during the global financial crisis in that investors are even selling what are normally considered safe-haven assets," said Junichi Ishikawa, senior foreign exchange strategist at IG Securities in Tokyo.
The dollar rose 0.8% against the pound to $1.1528, approaching the strongest since at least 1985, as the rush into dollars left no currency unscathed.
The greenback jumped 3% to an 11-year high versus the New Zealand dollar and rose more than 3% against the Australian dollar to a 17-year high.
The Reserve Bank of Australia cut interest rates for a second time this month on Thursday after an out-of-schedule policy meeting and made a foray into quantitative easing for the first time.
The US dollar has been climbing against most other currencies as a shortage of the currency pushed up swap rates.
Major central banks have taken steps this week to increase dollar liquidity, but this has done little to slow the dollar's gains.
Against the yen, the greenback rose 0.65% to 108.76.
In many cases investors are unloading Treasuries and other government bonds as well as gold in order to keep their money in dollars. This has confounded many analysts because investors normally buy government debt and precious metals during times of uncertainty.
The euro initially rose after the ECB announced a new asset purchase programme, but the common currency erased gains to trade little changed at $1.0924. The dollar rose 0.5% to 11.3860 Norwegian crown, approaching a record high reached Wednesday. Norway's currency also slid to a record low versus the euro.