Dollar (and, actually, Japanese yen too) showed a major triumph on Forex market today after the Bank of England decided to go down from 5.50% to 5.25% on the main interest rate. And despite, while BoE lowered the rate, ECB held the rate at the same 4.00% value, dollar bulls pushed EUR/USD down as well as the GBP/USD currency pair. And that’s on the disappointing fundamental data coming out in U.S.

U.S. initial jobless claims improved from the previous report at a little worse pace than market strategists expected — it fell from 378,000 (revised up from 375,000) to 356,000. That’s still a very high number for this indicator and it’s a clear sign of the current elevated recession risks.

Consumer credit in the United States in December grew by $2.4 billion — a very low number compared to the November’s $15.4 billion increase. Even pessimistic expectations of $8.0 million growth were above the released value.