Dollar pauses following Fed officials' comments

The US dollar held against most of its rivals on Tuesday, following the comments of several Fed members.

President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis James Bullard said that it is still early to talk about scaling back the Fed's easy policy stance, and projected that the inflation rate to rise above the Fed's target of 2% during 2022.

Data showed that the US house prices index rose 16.2% to an average of $319.2 during the first quarter of 2021, the highest quarterly jump ever.

The World Health Organization declared the new mutated variant of the Covid-19 virus in India, which caused a lot of concern around the world.

"If you're receiving unemployment benefits and you're offered a suitable job, you can't refuse that job and just keep getting unemployment benefits," US President Joe Biden stated after blames that his offer to expand unemployment benefit was reflected in last week's disappointing jobs report.

This came following the release of the US monthly jobs report last week, which showed less than expected added new jobs during April, while the unemployment rate rose unexpectedly.

The dollar index fell against a basket of currencies by less than 0.1% to 90.1 points as of 19:23 GMT, after it hit a high of 90.3 points and a low of 89.9 points.