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The Australian dollar is down against the US dollar on Monday.

Consumer confidence data for Australia hit another record low on Tuesday with Australians being forced into a more restrictive lockdown.

The dollar brushed off a new set of liquidity measures from the Federal Reserve, aimed at easing funding stresses and stable trading in the US Treasury market.

AUD/USD was lower by 77 pips (+1.26%) to 0.6092 with a daily range of 0.6079 to 0.6212 as of 5pm GMT.

An early rally was capped by the 0.62 level and the currency pair subsequently tumbled back to 0.61, meaning a weekly loss of 1.05%.

Australian dollar sinks as consumer confidence drops

The Aussie is often used as a proxy for the economic health of China but doubts about the reliability of official Chinese manufacturing PMIs limited the benefits. The China March Manufacturing PMI rose into expansion territory. The figures might not quite be all they are cracked up to be since purchasing managers were asked to compare with February when the country was in standstill.

Meanwhile the World Bank has forecasted China GDP for 2020 at 2.3%, down from a range of 6-7% over the past few years. Australian weekly consumer confidence crashed again on Tuesday, hitting a new low of 65.3, down from 72.2 this time last week.

US dollar gains despite dire Goldman growth forecast

The Federal Reserve announced its seventh new liquidity measure in two weeks on Tuesday, this one called the FIMA Repo Facility. The Fed is aiming to stop a shortage of dollars available amid big overseas demand from causing disorder in dollar funding and Treasury markets by offering to exchange Treasuries for US dollars, which the Fed will then repurchase at a later date.

In describing the new measures the Fed said: “This facility should help support the smooth functioning of the U.S. Treasury market by providing an alternative temporary source of U.S. dollars other than sales of securities in the open market.”

Separately in a staggering new forecast Goldman Sachs cuts its second quarter US growth forecast to -34% versus the prior year’s quarter and predicts an unemployment rate of 15%, up from 9% in previous forecast.