By Lukanyo Mnyanda and Yasuhiko Seki Jan. 18 (Bloomberg) -- The euro fell to a one-week low against the dollar amid speculation a meeting of European officials today won’t offer solutions to Greece’s deteriorating public finances. Europe’s currency also slumped to the weakest level since December against the yen before finance ministers from the 16 nations that use the euro meet in Brussels to scrutinize plans to curb Greece’s budget deficit. The pound rose to a four-month high against the euro as a report showed U.K. home sellers raised asking prices in January. Trading may be more subdued than usual today because of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. “It’s all about credibility and perceptions, and if there’s a building credibility gap on Greece, the euro will come under pressure,” said Jeremy Stretch, a senior currency strategist at Rabobank International in London. “The Greek finance minister will give a presentation, and the question is whether it will be perceived as credible.” The euro traded at $1.4374 as of 6:32 a.m. in New York from $1.4387 last week, after dropping to $1.4335, the lowest level since Jan. 8. The currency was at 130.44 yen from 130.61, after falling to 130.09, the weakest since Dec. 22. The dollar bought 90.74 yen from 90.77 yen. The euro weakened last week after the European Commission said there were “severe irregularities” in data Greece used to calculate its deficit. The currency union “is not liable for member countries’ debt,” European Central Bank Executive Board member Juergen Stark said on German radio on Jan. 15. U.S. Earnings Greece’s worsening finances last month prompted Fitch Ratings, Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s to cut the country’s creditworthiness, fueling concern the country might default on its debt and prompt investors to sell assets of other European countries. Moody’s said on Jan. 13 the Greek and Portuguese economies may face a “slow death” as they dedicate a higher proportion of their wealth to paying off debt. “Greece might be the weakest link but the chain does not stop there,” Steven Barrow, head of Group-of-10 currency strategy at Standard Bank Group Plc in London, wrote in a note today. There is “little doubt that if Greece were to allay some market concerns with its budgetary policy, this would not be the end of the issue for the region and not the end of euro-zone spread divergence or euro weakness.” Asian currencies declined alongside regional stock markets, with the Nikkei 225 Stock Average sliding 1.2 percent and the MSCI Asia Pacific Index of regional shares falling 0.4 percent. European stocks rose. Won, Pound The Korean won fell 0.1 percent to 1,124.60 per dollar. New Zealand’s dollar weakened by as much as 0.7 percent to 73.30 U.S. cents as the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand Inc. said house prices fell 0.9 percent in December. The currency was little changed at 73.78 U.S. cents. The pound strengthened to less than 88 pence per euro for the first time since Sept. 15 and was trading at 87.97 pence. It climbed 0.5 percent to $1.6337. Average asking house prices in England and Wales climbed 0.4 percent from the previous month, Rightmove Plc, the U.K.’s biggest property Web site, said today. From a year earlier, they increased 4.1 percent, leaving them 8.3 percent lower than the peak in May 2008. The yen fell earlier after Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa said the central bank will persist with its policy of fighting deflation. “The central bank is aiming to maintain an extremely accommodative financial environment,” Shirakawa said at a quarterly meeting of regional branch managers in Tokyo. ‘Comfortable’ Selling “With an exit from credit easing still some way off in Japan, people feel most comfortable in selling the yen,” said Yousuke Hosokawa, a senior currency dealer in Tokyo at Chuo Mitsui Trust & Banking Co., a unit of Japan’s seventh-largest bank. Forecasts for the euro, yen and Swiss franc from 61 Bloomberg survey contributors are within 9 cents of the mean on average, down from 11 cents a year ago, showing currency strategists are more in sync than any time since the depths of the financial crisis. The growing consensus signals that foreign-exchange swings will decline, luring investors to sell currencies from countries with lower interest rates to buy higher-yielding ones. That may weaken the yen and Swiss franc, and rein in the resurgent dollar. To contact the reporters on this story: Lukanyo Mnyanda in London at lmnyanda@bloomberg.net; Yasuhiko Seki in Tokyo at Yseki5@bloomberg.net

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