NEW YORK: Forex rates held steady Monday despite more worries over Portugal's ability to gain support to fix its deep fiscal woes, with the dollar trading virtually unchanged against the euro from Friday.
At 2100 GMT Monday the euro was at $1.4089 compared to $1.4088 late Friday.
One dollar bought 81.69 yen, up from 81.34 yen as the speculative pressure that forced a huge jump in the Japanese currency after the March 11 earthquake eased.
In the US, suggestions from analysts that the Federal Reserve might reel in its "quantitative easing" stimulus program as the economy expands were tempered by unimpressive statistics on housing sales and consumer spending data.
"The details of the consumption numbers were a little softer than we expected," said Peter Newland of Barclays Capital Research.
Although consumer spending increased at a fast nominal 0.7 percent rate in February over the previous month, when adjusted for the increases in food, fuels and other prices, it was only a 0.3 percent gain.
Meanwhile, adjusted net incomes fell 0.1 percent, giving a picture of consumers still not able to let loose their pocketbooks except for essentials.
In Europe questions remained over the fate of Portugal, after a two-day European Union summit concluded Friday with expressions of support but also calls for it to accept tough fiscal targets already agreed with Brussels.
Those targets led to the Portuguese parliament's rejection on Wednesday of the government's austerity plan, and the prime minister's resignation shortly afterwards.
On Monday Standard & Poor's warned it might further downgrade Portugal's credit rating this week after lowering it by two levels last week following the government's resignation.
"The negative headlines surrounding the European debt crisis appear to have reached a 'critical mass' to weigh on the euro. The EU leaders summit came up short on the mechanisms for expanding the current bailout facilities," said Vassili Serebriakov of Wells Fargo Bank.
Meanwhile, the pound lost ground to $1.5996 from $1.6042, while the dollar traded to 0.9164 Swiss francs from 0.9199 francs.
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