Australia: The Australian Dollar has recovered from the short term wobbles on Friday evening when it fell to just above of 0.9600 on thin post-Thanksgiving US trading and concerns on the financial situation in Ireland.

We are starting this week firmly in the high 0.9600's after having breached 0.9700 in early trading Lurking in the background were continuing geopolitical tensions between North and South Korea as the US and South Korea were preparing for four days of war games beginning on the weekend.

All equity markets on Friday were softer as well and so were the hard commodities.

Gold and oil were a touch lower to just under US$84 a barrel and US$1364 an ounce.

Locally this week is filled with new data, the highlight of which is Wednesday's Q3 GDP figure.

Most analysts predict a result of between 0.5% and 0.8%.

New home sales data, company profits and inventories kick off the week and are followed by a whole raft of data on Tuesday that is likely to point to the likely outcome of the GDP on Wednesday.

Majors: A EUR85bn bailout for Ireland has been announced with the EC contributing EUR45bn and the IMF EUR22.5bn to complement Ireland's current cash reserves of EUR17.5bn.

Interest on the new debt will be at 6% pa, slightly lower than where existing bonds were trading last week.

With a budget deficit of 14.4% of GDP last year the government is cutting spending and raising taxes with the aim of reducing their budget deficit to 3% by 2014, a very big ask.

In the background there is also talk of the EC establishing a framework of how to deal with debt crises since the likes of Portugal and Spain face a potential debt crisis as well.

The EUR fell against the USD towards 1.3200 on Friday night on nervousness concerning the Irish bailout but has recovered slightly as
the bailout details emerged.

The USD as safe haven status has waned a touch this morning as no new developments have occurred on the Korean peninsula.

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