Currencies: Euro Comes Under Pressure

So much turkey-related news, it feels like Thanksgiving. The euro is falling sharply against the dollar and other major currency players because of political distress in Turkey.

A verbal dispute between Turkey's President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit caused a major political riff yesterday, sparking a massive downturn in the Turkish markets and poisoning the interests of international investors. The adverse affects has "definitely put a lot of downward pressure on the euro," said Lara Rhame, an economist at Brown Brothers Harriman . It brings to question two key areas: the underlying question of expansion of the euro to countries not already using the single-currency and the stability of a currency across multiple governments, Rhame said.

The euro was recently trading for $0.9072, a far drop from yesterday's closing price of $0.9217. A large part of today's decline in the euro/dollar is due to technical selling related to the U.S. markets being closed yesterday. "These moves down are temporary," Rhame said, nothing that analysts believe "anything below $0.92 is a good buy." ...