Dollar Falls After Snow Signals U.S. Won't Try to Strengthen It

[Changenow]

Jan. 11 (Bloomberg) -- The dollar had the biggest drop in two weeks in Asia after Treasury Secretary John Snow suggested the U.S. won't try to strengthen its currency.

Exchange rates are best left to ``market forces,'' Snow told Reuters in a television interview, three days after he said U.S. policy makers ``want to do things to sustain the strength'' of the dollar, which dropped for a third year in 2004. Those comments last week helped the currency to its second-biggest weekly climb ever against the euro.

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Snow said in a Dec. 3 interview he has ``a deep respect for the way markets perform,'' suggesting he won't accede to European and Asian calls to halt the dollar's decline, which last year weakened by 7.1 percent against the euro and 4.3 percent versus the euro.

``The repetition of `market forces' sounds likes nothing's changed'' in U.S. currency policy, said Robert Rennie, a currency strategist in Sydney at Westpac Banking Corp. ``So the dollar goes down.'' It may fall to $1.3150 per euro today, he said.

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