The dollar weakened before data forecast to show the U.S. unemployment claims rose last week and as speculation Spain will seek a sovereign bailout eased demand for the currency as a haven. The greenback slid against most of 16 major peers tracked by Bloomberg after Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis President Narayana Kocherlakota yesterday repeated his call for the central bank to keep rates low until the U.S. unemployment rate has dropped. The dollar earlier rose to the strongest in more than a week against the euro after Standard & Poor’s yesterday cut Spain’s sovereign-debt rating to one level above junk. “Kocherlakota was coming up with fairly dovish remarks and the dollar is a softer currency on the back of the Fed’s very accommodative policy,� said Jane Foley, a senior currency strategist at Rabobank International in London. “On the backdrop of everything you’ve got going on with Spain, you have a weakened environment for the U.S. dollar.� The dollar fell 0.1 percent against the euro to $1.2882 at 11:12 a.m. London time, after climbing 0.4 percent to $1.2826, the strongest since Oct. 1. It also slipped 0.1 percent to 78.13 yen. The euro was little changed at 100.66 yen. A report today will show the number of Americans filing first-time claims for unemployment insurance payments climbed to 370,000 in the week ended Oct. 6, from 367,000 a week earlier, according to the median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists. To contact the reporter on this story: Lucy Meakin in London at lmeakin1@bloomberg.net. To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Dobson at pdobson2@bloomberg.net.

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