Austrian central banker Nowotny says the euro rise is not helpful for the recovery.

Not that the ECB can do anything about it. In fact they are trying to do the opposite, remove liquidity and get banks back into borrowing from each other rather than from the ECB, which will tend to benefit the euro…

EUR/USD is running into some “natural” selling into strength as traders look to book profits after sitting through their first significant draw-down in weeks over the last 24 hours. 1.3985 was the post-payrolls high. We trade now at 1.3960.

Crossing the wires: Portuguese government approves additional spending cuts, raises civil servants” pension contributions , cuts transport subsides for civil servants…