Dollar Rises Versus Yen in Asian Trading

The dollar rose to 116.16 yen midafternoon Friday, from 115.74 yen late Thursday in New York. The euro rose to $1.3668 from $1.3637.

Despite some selling of the dollar by Japanese exporters early in the day, Japanese investment funds sold the yen and pushed the dollar higher.

The dollar also got a boost by news that Bush will talk later Friday about ways to help the hundreds of thousands of American borrowers hard hit by the housing slump. Defaults on U.S. subprime housing loans has tightened credit and rocked global financial markets.

"The subprime mortgage market problems may seem to be calming down on the surface," but looking at it closely, the situation is deteriorating, so players are seeking cues from the U.S. Federal Reserve, said Satoshi Okagawa, head of the foreign exchange forward trading group at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is to speak later Friday as well.

"Players hope to find out how seriously the Fed is taking the recent credit market crisis," said Masashi Kurabe, senior FX manager at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.

Players brushed off Japanese employment data which improved to 3.6 percent in July from 3.7 percent in June.

The government also announced other data, including Japan's nationwide core consumer price index which fell 0.1 percent in July from a year earlier, the sixth straight month of decline.

Against other currencies, the dollar was lower. It fell 0.24 percent against the Philippine peso to 46.690, and 0.20 percent against the South Korean won to 938.4.