It has been an extremely interesting day in the currency market with Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner tripping over his comments about the U.S. dollar and an auction of 5 year Treasury notes seeing surprising weak results. Geithner’s fumble could not come at a worst time as investors remain skeptical about the effectiveness of the Obama Administration’s efforts to stimulate the U.S. economy. Top that off with the failed Treasury auction and it is clear that the actions of everyone in the Obama Administration from the Treasury Secretary to the Federal Reserve Chairman have left an air of uncertainty across the financial markets. The U.S. dollar has weakened against the Euro and Japanese Yen but ended the day unchanged against the commodity currencies.

The U.S. dollar initially traded higher after the Treasury released details for the Public-Private Investment Program aimed at taking bad debts off bank balance sheets. Their actions help to create a floor under the toxic assets, reassuring global investors. However early gains in the U.S. dollar was overshadowed by the massive rally in the U.S. equity market. The 6.8 percent rise in the Dow or close to 500 point move reflected stronger risk appetite and growing demand for higher yielding currencies such as the Euro, Australian and New Zealand dollars at the expense of the greenback. If the Dow hits 8000, we could see a new 2 month high in the EUR/USD above 1.38.

The Treasury has finally released the details on their Public Private Investment Program (PPIP) aimed at taking toxic assets off of bank balance sheets. Investors are cheering this announcement as they have been eagerly awaiting these details since the program was first announced 2 months ago.

Details of the Geithner plan have been leaked to the press and according to the New York Times they are comprised of three key proposals. “The plan to be announced next week involves three separate approaches. In one, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will set up special-purpose investment partnerships and lend about 85 percent of the money that those partnerships will need to buy up troubled assets that banks want to sell. In the second, the Treasury will hire four or five investment management firms, matching the private money that each of the firms puts up on a dollar-for-dollar basis with government money. In the third piece, the Treasury plans to expand lending through the Term Asset-Backed Secure Lending Facility, a joint venture with the Federal Reserve.”

FOMC's stunning announcement yesterday that it will buy up to $300 Billion in Treasury bonds took the currency market by surprise and rallied the EUR/USD by more than 500 points in less than 24 hours. As we wrote earlier the FOMC announcement ,” represents an 'all-in' bet on massive monetary stimulus in order to stem the worst contraction in the US economy since World War II. The move is of course wildly dilutive to the currency with nearly $1 Trillion created out of thin air. Little wonder then why the dollar collapsed across the board even as other asset classes rallied. It also indicates that the Fed may have come to the conclusion that the two biggest customers for US debt – China and Japan – may be unable or unwilling to provide additional capital to finance the gargantuan expansion of US fiscal spending this year and next.”

The reverberations from yesterday’s surprise announcement by the Fed continued in the currency market with EUR/USD remaining bid in early European trade but the 1.3500 handle remained serious resistance as the pair had trouble penetrating that level. Yesterday’s announcement by the FOMC that it will purchase up to $300 Billion in US Treasury securities, spurred a massive dollar sell off as few traders expected the Fed to initiate quantitative easing quite so soon and on such a large scale.

The euro and pound rose on the first trading day of the week as risk appetite returned to the currency market after US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner promised to release details of a new plan to use a private and public partnership funds to remove toxic assets off the balance sheets of US banks. Both Asian and European equities rose providing a strong bid tone to the risk currencies. Cable rallied through the 1.4100 handle and euro approached the psychologically key 1.3000 level by midday European trade.

Uncertainty about the future of President-elect Barack Obama’s cabinet and staff are mounting. We are now met with controversy over one of the most crucial positions, Treasury Secretary. It was recently reported that the nominee for the position, Timothy Geithner, failed to pay a large portion of his taxes, casting doubt upon the certainty for his seemingly inevitable nomination. These indiscretions involved $34,000 of unpaid social security and Medicare payments.