"A banker need not to be popular.Indeed, a good banker in a healyhy capitalist society should probably be much disliked." - John K. Galbraith

FOREX MARKET
The greenback ended the week by appreciating over the main European currency until 1.2034 on Friday. Hurricane Rita came ashore during the weekend, proving to be less damaging than the market feared. In the short run, the international markets seem to be optimistic over the dollar, enforcing it vs. the euro. Taking a glance over the present situation of the U.S. economy, we could say that the USD is overbought, as on Monday early trading the EUR/USD was quoted at 1.2008. We set the resistance level at 1.2130, as the market will price in the risk of a slowdown in economical growth in the U.S. On September 23rd, there was pretty high volatility on the local forex market, as in the first stage the euro firmed against the RON as high as 3.6120, on the back of better short term interest rates for hard currency deposits as compared with the domestic ones. However, later on Fridays trade, the RON fought back, taking the EUR/RON exchange rate as low as 3.5450. On Monday morning, the EUR/RON pair was traded at 3.5600 and by noon the domestic currency appreciated further to 3.5450, where it found a stable point.

MONEY MARKET
The National Bank finally decided to organize a depo auction on Monday, after a month of absence from the money market. In the morning, the interest rates for the O/N deposits were situated at 0.5-2%, but soon after NBR s announcement the rates rallied to 37%. As lately NBR refused to sterilize the surplus liquidity on the market, several commercial banks changed their FX positions and decided to stay long on euros.