NZ dollar reaches record high
11:12AM Wednesday April 18, 2007
The New Zealand dollar this morning broke a 25-year-old record high against the US dollar - fantastic news for holiday makers but bad news for exporters.
The dollar briefly traded at US74.76c, the highest level it has touched since it became a free floating currency in March 1985. It was floated at US44.44c.
The dollar was last at this level against the US dollar in 1982 when New Zealand ran a so-called crawling peg currency.
The previous post-float high of US74.65c was in March 2005.
At 12.10 it had eased slightly and was trading at US74.64c.
Today's inflation data helped push the kiwi up in frantic trading. Although the Consumer Price Index rise of 0.5 per cent was just below forecasts, analysts said it was high enough to persuade the Reserve Bank to hike interest rates next week.
Rampant inflation and high foreign borrowing in the early 1980s forced authorities to continually devalue the New Zealand dollar from over US82c in 1982 to under US45c just prior to floating the currency.
More
here .
And a bit
more about the rising dollar.