The dollar rose on Friday, with traders looking beyond soft US consumer-spending data, while the steadily sliding euro won a reprieve on diminished expectations the European Central Bank will soon ease monetary policy. Meanwhile, Russia's rubble hit an all-time low against the dollar as worries grew that the Ukraine crisis may bring even more economic sanctions.
-- Goldman Sachs sees long euro slide to dollar parity
-- Russia's ruble at all-time low vs dollar
After setting 2014 peaks repeatedly this week, the dollar index was last up 0.26 percent at 82.689 after briefly turning lower when US government data showed Americans' personal spending shrunk 0.1 percent in July. The report, which economists had expected to show a rise of 0.2 percent, prompted speculation among traders readying for a three-day holiday break in the United States that US gross domestic product may grow less during the third quarter than currently forecast.
But traders still see promise in the US economy despite the disappointing data about spending that accounts for 70 percent of GDP, according to Boris Schlossberg, managing director at BK Asset Management in New York. "The market does not think it is a straw that breaks the camel's back," Schlossberg said. "The market thinks the consumer will catch up."
The dollar was trading up 0.33 percent against the Japanese yen, which has risen this week on safe-haven buying triggered by the Ukraine crisis. The dollar last traded at 104.08 yen. The euro was last off 0.3 percent at $1.3142, having risen to a session high of $1.3195 soon after a report on euro zone inflation, and touching a one-year low of 1.3137.
The euro was on track for a second straight month of losses as euro zone annual inflation has slowed to a five-year low of 0.3 percent, well below the ECB's "danger zone" of 1.0 percent. The euro zone currency has shed 3.6 percent against the dollar in the past three months, partly due to the conflict in Ukraine, which is likely to weigh on growth in the bloc.
Euro weakness against the dollar will persist for years and will lead to price parity between the euro and the greenback, a new report by Goldman Sachs said. "We are revising down our (euro/dollar) forecast to 1.29, 1.25 and 1.20 in three, six and 12 months (from 1.35, 1.34 and 1.30 previously)," the analysts wrote. "We are also revising our longer-term forecasts lower, bringing the end-2015 number down to 1.15 (from 1.27), that for end-2016 to 1.05 (from 1.23) and that for end-2017 to 1.00 (from 1.20)." In New York, the rubble dropped 1 percent to 37.1225 per dollar after hitting an all-time low of 37.207.