Pound Trades Lower Against Most Major Rivals

Pound Trades Lower Against Most Major Rivals 09/25/2012 - 12:36:00 (RTTNews) (RTTNews) - The British pound traded lower against most of its major counterparts in New York mid-day deals on Tuesday. Extending its European session's downtrend, the sterling declined further against the euro in today's New York session and edged down to 0.7988 at around 12:10 pm ET, compared to yesterday's close of 0.7974. In the European session, Germany, Europe's largest economy released some reports as Bundesbank is checking the legality of European Central Bank's recently announced bond buying program. Germany's consumer confidence is set to remain unchanged in October, easing fears of the economy slipping into a recession, survey results from market research group GfK showed. The forward-looking consumer sentiment index came in at 5.9 in October, unchanged from September and matched economists' expectations. In a meeting held by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel with European Central Bank President Mario Draghi in Berlin, Merkel said Germany cannot decouple from Europe and the global economy. Germany is not an island, but a strong exporting nation, she said at a conference organized by the German Industry Association in Berlin. She observed that there is a lack of confidence in financial markets about the ability of the governments to repay its debt. It would have been better if the European Court of Justice had been granted powers to monitor the fiscal pact, Merkel noted. She said the member countries should do more to reduce their unit labor cost, instead of demanding Germany to raise its cost so as to lower imbalances in the euro area. Against its Swiss counterpart, the pound continued its previous session's downtrend and presently trading near 1.5161, compared to 1.5183 hit late New York Monday. The British currency also edged down versus the US dollar in today's afternoon deals and dropped to 1.6213 by about 12:30 pm ET from previous session's multi-day high of 1.6270. In economic news from U.S., the Conference Board released a report showed that its consumer confidence index jumped to 70.3 in September from a revised 61.3 in August