The ECB shocked the market by lowering its overnight rate by only 25bp to 1.25% versus consensus calls of a 50bp cut despite the worsening economic conditions in the Eurozone. The EUR/USD immediatey shot ot 1.3400 but traders will await the post announcement press conference with Jean Claude Trichet to draw further conclusions.

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is expected to tell us that US employers fired another 500k people in the month of January. Surprisingly enough currencies and equities are trading higher ahead of the non-farm payrolls report which suggests that traders are not afraid of a bad number. Everyone knows that the US economy is very weak and major job losses will continue. Since traders are becoming immune to bad data, it may take job losses in the area of 600k to spook them (January Non-Farm Payrolls Preview). Instead, traders are looking beyond Friday’s non-farm payrolls report to the Monday, February 9th speech by US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. According to a Treasury official, Geithner is expected to unveil a bank rescue plan next week. This is one of the few things that could strike a meaningful recovery in the currency and equity markets. If traders deem Geithner’s plan as satisfactory, we could see a further recovery in the financial markets despite the fact that the US economy will get worse before it gets better.

The assault on the pound continued for the second night in a row as the unit hit a 7 year low plunging through the physiologically critical 1.4000 level for the first time since 2001. FX traders feared that the massive new UK government spending schemes to rescue the ailing banking sector would result in further deterioration of country’ s balance sheet effectively devalued the currency by 3% overnight.

The euro staged a strong rebound in early European trade this morning rising all the way above the 1.3600 handle, but news of greater than expected job losses in Germany halted the advance at that level for the time being. The rally in the pair started in Asia as bargain hunters reemerged near the 1.3500 figure attracted to the relative value in the pair after three straight days of selling. The push higher caught the shorts by surprise and EUR/USD quickly ran through the 1.3600 barrier after triggering a slew of stops.

The anti-dollar rally continued in Asian and early European trade today in the aftermath of yesterdays surprising -75bp cut by the Federal Reserve, but the pace of gains was decidedly more muted as currency traders booked profits in the wake of lackluster equity market performance and downcast economic data from UK.