Tokyo - The dollar marched higher on Wednesday, supported by expectations for a mid-year US rate hike and diverging policy paths between the Fed and other major central banks.
The US currency's unrelenting rise saw it jump against a string of global peers including the euro and yen, while it also advanced against emerging market currencies from the Indonesian rupiah to the Thai baht.
Upbeat US jobs data Friday has fanned speculation that the US central bank will follow through on an interest rate hike by June.
On Wednesday it jumped to 121.42 yen in Tokyo from 121.07 yen in US trade. It had hit a near eight-year high above 122 yen on Tuesday.
The embattled euro bought $1.0677 and 129.67 yen, against $1.0698 and 129.53 yen in New York, after the European Central Bank launched its monetary easing campaign this week in a bid to rescue the stumbling eurozone economy.
The last time the euro fell below $1.07 line was in April 2003.
“It's a stronger-US-dollar story,” Peter Dragicevich, a strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, told Bloomberg News.
“The general theme of the stronger dollar and markets positioning and looking to the Fed to raise rates later this year continues to come through.”
The dollar has won support from the Fed's moves to tighten policy as a string of central banks go in the opposite direction and ratchet up their stimulus, which tends to weaken their currencies.
It climbed to 1,128.55 South Korean won from 1,121.05 won on Tuesday, to 44.35 Philippine pesos from 44.28 pesos, and to 32.69 Thai baht from 32.63 baht.
The dollar soared to 13,191 Indonesian rupiah, its highest since 1998, from 13,065 rupiah, while the Australian dollar eased to 76.01 US cents from 76.44 cents.
Investors were keeping a close yen Greece as technical talks over Athens' bailout extension appear to falter.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble insisted Tuesday that the meeting would involve the so-called “troika” of creditors - the European Commission, International Monetary Fund and European Central Bank - despite claims by Athens that the much-loathed group would play no part.
After five years of painful austerity, Greece's leftist government swept to power in January on a hugely popular pledge to refuse all dealings with the troika that saw through the tough reforms during two bailouts since 2010.
AFP