The end of the week brought a few surprises for the foreign exchange market but the New Zealand dollar ended little changed from yesterday.
By 5pm the kiwi was at US58.73c from US58.87c on Thursday, while the aussie followed a similar downward path to US65.72c (US65.84c).
The greenback weakened overnight on Thursday as a massive power cut struck major cities in the northern United States and Canada, sparking brief fears of a terrorist attack.
The outage was later found to be the result of a lightning strike.
Late in the New Zealand session, authorities declared clear the Waikato man admitted to hospital with a suspected case of the fatal brain-wasting disease, variant creutzfeldt-jakob disease (vCJD).
The Health Ministry announced eight days ago it was awaiting results of tests on the 26-year-old farm worker to see if he had vCJD, following rumours in the London money markets of foot and mouth in New Zealand.
After its surge towards US59c in the offshore session, one local dealer said the kiwi traded between US58.64/93c yesterday.
"It's been back and forth quite actively with what's been going on in New York and the announcement that this guy doesn't have vCJD.
"It's moved it from US58.70/75c to US58.85/90c -- it's pretty much died since we moved here. It did have a little impact on a very, very quiet period of time."
In Tokyo, the US dollar was steady against the yen, recovering much of its earlier losses as the market digested the impact of major power outages in the United States.
In New Zealand by 5pm the euro eased to US$1.1250 from US$1.1330 last night, while the US dollar also eased a little against the Japanese currency to 118.98 yen (119.28 Thursday night).
On the crosses at 5pm the kiwi was buying A89.51c (A89.42c Thursday night), 69.99 yen (70.22), 36.74 pence (36.60), 0.8073 Swiss francs (0.8039), and 0.5229 euros (0.5196).
The Australian dollar eased against the kiwi to buy $1.1172 ($1.1185).
The monetary conditions index was at plus 313 (308), the trade-weighted index was at 63.09 (63.03), and 90-day bank bill yields were at 5.12 per cent (5.14).
The February 2005 yields were at 5.26 per cent (5.29), the November 2006s were 5.50 per cent (5.52), and the November 2011s were at 5.90 per cent (5.96).
- NZPA
<I>Currency:</I> Kiwi eases despite no VCJD
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