NEW YORK, Feb 12 - The following are comments from debt and currency market analysts on Thursday after the U.S. government released data showing an unexpected rise in weekly jobless claims and an unexpected drop in retail sales. Weekly jobless claims moved up to 363,000 in the Feb. 7 week, above expectations for a 345,000 and above the previous week's 357,000 figure.
On the retail sales front, overall January retail sales fell by 0.3 percent. But excluding autos, they rose more than expected by 0.9 percent, painting a more positive picture. Economists had expected overall sales to be flat and for sales excluding autos to rise 0.5 percent.
LAUREN GERMAIN, CURRENCY STRATEGIST, BANC OF AMERICA SECURITIES, NEW YORK:
"We saw a knee-jerk reaction (in currency markets). After the move yesterday there is probably not much room for a huge jump of the euro. The dollar lost a lot of ground after Greenspan's testimony Wednesday. You would expect a bigger reaction because the numbers today were slightly disappointing. But a soft labor market and weak economic data were priced in yesterday after Greenspan's remarks."//