Chile’s peso weakened 2.6 percent to 512.58 against the greenback and Poland’s zloty fell 1.6 percent to 3.2779.

“QE3 is now likely to end in the middle of next year so we’ve had an initial rise in the dollar,” said Gavin Friend, a currency strategist at National Australia Bank Ltd. in London, referring to quantitative easing, or QE. “People are reading this as the end the cheap money that’s gone into emerging markets from the U.S. and Europe. If today’s U.S. data is reasonable, the dollar will continue to rally against currencies like the Aussie in particular.”

More Americans than forecast filed applications for unemployment benefits last week, showing progress on reducing joblessness remains uneven amid slower growth this quarter.

Australia’s dollar dropped for a fifth day versus the greenback amid the prospect of reduced Fed stimulus and after HSBC Holdings Plc and Markit Economics said the preliminary reading of their Purchasing Managers’ Index for China’s manufacturing was at 48.3 in June, below the 49.1 estimated by economists in a Bloomberg survey.

Aussie Forces

“The link between the China growth story and the Aussie dollar remains crucial,” said Michael Judge, a dealer at OZForex Pty Ltd. in Sydney. “We all know the only way interest rates are heading in this country at the moment is south, and obviously weakening China growth doesn’t help that prognosis.”

The Aussie slid 1.2 percent to 91.84 U.S. cents after dropping to the weakest since Sept. 8, 2010. The New Zealand dollar fell 1.9 percent to 77.49 cents after reaching 77.43, the lowest since June 14, 2012.

The Federal Open Market Committee yesterday left the monthly pace of bond purchases at $85 billion, saying “downside risks to the outlook for the economy and the labor market” have diminished. Policy makers raised their growth forecasts for next year to a range of 3 percent to 3.5 percent and reduced their outlook for unemployment to as low as 6.5 percent.

“If the incoming data are broadly consistent with this forecast, the committee currently anticipates that it would be appropriate to moderate the pace of purchases later this year,” Bernanke said in a press conference in Washington. If later reports meet the Fed’s expectations, “we will continue to reduce the pace of purchases in measured steps through the first half of next year, ending purchases around mid-year.”

Krone Slump