The EUR/USD currency pair declined today before and after the macroeconomic releases that were scheduled for today and even after the speech by the Fed’s Ben Bernanke. In his speech Bernanke said that he will prolong the emergency-loan program for the banks into 2009. This will probably mean less interest rate hikes as it would be hard for the FOMC to raise rate significantly and provide the liquidity to the failing banks simultaneously.

Pending home sales index based on the May data declined from 88.9% to 84.7%, while a moderate decline by 2.8% has been expected. Last time this index showed 7.1% growth (revised up from 6.3%).

Wholesale inventories climbed up 0.8% in May — better than 0.6% forecast, but worse than the 1.3% growth in April.