June 10 (Bloomberg) -- The yen declined against all of its major counterparts as speculation the global recession is easing encouraged investors to buy higher-yielding assets funded in the Japanese currency. Australia’s dollar advanced as consumer confidence jumped in June by the most in 22 years and China’s property sales and investment accelerated in the first five months of 2009 from a year earlier. The pound rose versus the dollar for a third day as a report showed U.K. manufacturing expanded in April for a second month. “The world is a slightly better place now,” said David Bradley, director of foreign-exchange trading at Scotia Capital Inc. in Toronto, a unit of Canada’s third-largest bank. The yen slid 0.5 percent to 137.61 per euro at 10:29 a.m. in New York, from 136.98 yesterday. It declined 0.6 percent to 97.99 per dollar from 97.38. The U.S. currency advanced 0.4 percent to $1.4014 per euro from $1.4065. The dollar’s gain versus the euro accelerated after the greenback broke $1.4040, a level where traders placed pre-set orders to buy the currency, according to Brian Dolan, chief currency strategist at FOREX.com, a unit of the online currency trading firm Gain Capital Group in Bedminster, New Jersey. “The long trade is looking tired,” Dolan said. Such a position is a bet the euro will advance. The dollar earlier declined versus the euro after the Russian central bank’s first deputy chairman, Alexei Ulyukayev, said in Moscow today that Russia may switch some of its reserves from Treasuries to International Monetary Fund bonds.

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