Japanese Earthquake Spurs Risk Aversion - The Yen dove as the deadly earthquake and tsunami shook Japan. The earthquake registered 8.9 on the Richter scale and caused a tsunami of 10 meters (33 feet) to engulf towns along the northern coast. However, just as in past Japanese earthquakes, the Yen recovered and moved higher against most currencies as the rebuild will lead to a construction phase on top of the repatriation and insurance flows. Wow, the earthquake will be able to do something that the Bank of Japan has been unable to do in years - create inflation. Meanwhile in Europe, the story remains the same, the Euro is on its back foot ahead of today meeting of euro zone leaders. Today's meeting is a prelude to the 27-nation European Union summit on March 24-25, which is suppose to tackle the ongoing debt crisis that has been pressuring the Euro for a year. In Canada, the CAD fell after the earthquake spurred risk aversion. Also, today jobs numbers for Canada gave the Bank of Canada room to breathe as the data was a little soft. The Canadian economy was only able to add 15,100 jobs in February, which was less than the 21K that was expected. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 7.8% in February. A closer look at the data reveals that full time jobs were down by 24k which was offset by an increase of 38K part time jobs.
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