The euro’s dip below $1.06

Date: 29/04/1999

this week prompted top policy-makers to start trying to talk it up. First came French Finance Minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn with an interview in The Wall Street Journal in which he stated that a further fall in the currency “doesn't appear desirable”. At this week's spring meeting of the Bretton Woods institutions in Washington, European Central Bank President Wim Duisenberg spoke out in defence of the new currency. “If that decline would go on, we would increasingly frown and it would be a matter for concern,” he said, while adding that talk of the falling to 'historic' lows was “ridiculous” when it was only four months old. Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, a member of the ECB's executive board, agreed. “There are no factors in the fundamental conditions of the euro economy that would justify a continuation of the decline that we have seen in recent weeks,” he said.