The Australian dollar touched the lowest level in more than a week against its U.S counterpart for a second day before a report tomorrow forecast to show Australia failed to gain jobs in June. The Aussie and the New Zealand dollar dropped against the majority of their 16 most-traded peers after the official Xinhua News Agency reported Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said the government will intensify fine-tuning of its policies in response to downside risks to economic growth. European finance ministers met yesterday in Brussels in to discuss measures to ease the region’s debt crisis. The Australian dollar slid as much as 0.6 percent to $1.0155 yesterday in New York, the lowest level since June 29, before trading little changed at $1.0208. The Aussie fell 0.2 percent to 81.21 yen. New Zealand’s currency, nicknamed the kiwi, fell 0.2 percent to 79.64 U.S. cents. It depreciated 0.3 percent to 63.37 yen. The Chinese leader’s comments came after the South Pacific nation’s biggest trading partner announced the second interest- rate cut in a month. Stocks fell, with the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) declining 0.2 percent and the MSCI World Index (MXWO) dropping 0.4 percent. Australia’s unemployment rate rose to 5.2 percent in June, from 5.1 percent the previous month, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News before the statistics bureau in Sydney releases the data tomorrow. The nation added 38,900 jobs in May. To contact the reporter on this story: Lindsey Rupp in New York at lrupp2@bloomberg.net To contact the editor responsible for this story: Dave Liedtka at dliedtka@bloomberg.net

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