Asian currencies take a hit
The dollar fell in Asian markets on worries about the U.S. banking system. Those emerging economies were expected to ride out the financial storms. But as Scott Tong reports, that's not turning out to be so.
A worried investor views stock indexes at a securities company in Chongqing Municipality, China. (China Photos/Getty Images)
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TEXT OF STORY
Stacey Vanek Smith: The dollar is way down today, as you can imagine. Asian currencies have taken a hit as well. That volatility probably won't end anytime soon, as Scott Tong reports.
Scott Tong: The Philippine peso sits at its lowest level of the year against the dollar. India's rupiah sits at two-year low. In Russia and Korea, the drops are so severe that governments have intervened to stabilize exchange rates. These are the emerging markets that hopeful economists thought could ride out the global storm. But the storm gets worse by the day, says David Cohen. He's with Action Economics in Singapore.
David Cohen: There's the fear that with the U.S. and Europe and Japan slowing more severely that this is finally going to pull down some of the Asian exporting economies with it.
There may not be enough buyers in the developed world for all those Asian exports. A positive counterweight is China. It's still growing at 8 or 9 percent, still importing Korean computer chips and Japanese bulldozers. But these days, the prevailing view among currency traders is to go conservative and retreat at least a bit from emerging markets.
In Shanghai, I'm Scott Tong for Marketplace.
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From La Jolla, CA, 09/16/2008
I don't understand how the dollar can be way down and the Asian currencies can be way down? Is the dollar actually up or are both being measured relative to something else?
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