Australian dollar falls below parity

The Australian dollar has plummeted to 96.2 US cents, down from its record high of 110.5 US cents in July.

Last July, I wrote about an incredible day where the Australian dollar rose to a massive 110.5 US cents. In that one day, the Australian dollar had risen from 108.9 US cents the night before to break all previous records.

Now with Europe concerned about Greece defaulting on its debt and general uncertainty about the United States’ and Japanese economies, the Australian dollar has fallen rapidly.

The decline of the Australian Dollar can be seen in this graph from XE.com’s Universal Currency Converter, which shows it’s value against the US dollar from 27 July 2011 until now:

Overnight, the Australian dollar fell to 96.92 US cents, more than 2.5 cents down from yesterday’s close of 100.18 US cents and a massive 5 cents since last week. The last time the Australian dollar was traded at the 97 US cent range was in early December, 2010.

The Australian dollar has fallen 14.3 cents since that high of 27 July 2011.

Whilst this will come as good news to Australian export-based industries who have suffered under a powerful Australian Dollar, it is a sign of increasing uncertainty about the global economy.

In particular, there is a lot of concern that Greece will default on its loans, fuelling speculation that an end to the European shared currency or even the Eurozone itself may ultimately result.

There doesn’t seem to be an easy fix to what has become a very complicated financial and economic mess globally.

Have Your Say

Δ