The resignation of the Japanese Finance Minister was a blow to the Japanese government which is being increasingly criticized, not least about its management of the economic crisis. The Japanese economy has not been in such a bad state since the Second World War.

As it happens, the resignation was almost unnoticed internationally as the bad news elsewhere just got worse since Monday morning. The plummeting of eastern European currencies on the one hand could be a great boost to forex traders. On the other hand, this was also a disaster for the EUR because of the close ties between all the currencies the European continent. So, the EUR on Tuesday morning reached its lowest point for nearly two months at 1.2655 against the USD.

In fact, the dramatic fall of the Eastern European currencies has had a wide reaching effect. Indeed, the Polish zloty (PLZ), the Czech koruna (CZK), the Dutch guilder (NLG) and the Romanian lei (RON) all reached record lows on the forex yesterday due to a mixture of renewed speculation and risk aversion which penalize any strong currencies which emerge on the forex. The debt problems and the warning from Moody’s (the financial research and analysis agency) to the banks of Eastern Europe created a small wave of panic that was passed on the EUR.

The GBP, which was untouched by this movement, made an unexpected peak yesterday following the publication of figures for consumer prices which rose by 3% year on year in January, as a result of this announcement the predicted slowdown will be weaker than initially anticipated by financial analysts.

In the end, as has been pointed out by many forex experts, it becomes increasingly clear that only gold can still be a real safe haven in this period of high uncertainty.