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Deceitful Penguin posted:Ok, can you give me more info on what/how they've failed in doing? Is the strong Yen hurting exports or is there more to it? Yes, the primary concern is the strong Yen hurting exports. As for Japan's previous Yen interventions, I casually dug around the internet and found 4 explicit instances of the Bank of Japan intervening to weaken the yen prior to the most recent one. I might be missing something because central banks intentionally use the same or similar terminology for different policy actions and news organizations follow them, adding to the confusion. Seriously, gently caress central-bank-anese.
Here’s a chart of USD to JPY exchange rate for the time period. For laughs, 82 yens-per-dollar was suppose to be the do-not-cross exchange rate.  Generally speaking, the interventions haven’t stopped the Yen appreciation (getting stronger) against the US dollar. The Yen does weaken temporarily immediately after the intervention, but then it bounces back after a few days. This current intervention is not negligible compared to previous interventions but is actually par for the course (it's ~Y10 trillion). However, that doesn't bode well for its success given how the similarly sized intervention in October 2011 didn't do much to stop the Yen's appreciation. As to why the interventions fail, the most plausible explanation I've heard (please note that I don't know poo poo) is that there's a strong demand for Yen assets. Even with its massive debt, political inability, deflation, etc., Japan is still better off than many other developed economies, so it has a perception of being a "safe haven." The world keeps getting more and more uncertain (economically speaking) so people keep piling onto safe things, namely US Treasuries and, I guess, Japanese bonds. If someone has a better explanation, please bring it up because, seriously, I don't know poo poo. CIGNX fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Sep 23, 2012 |
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Sep 22, 2012 23:55
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Not to derail the always interesting nationalism chat, but I've got a question about the LDP. I heard long ago that the LDP is a bit more reform-minded than in its past and compared to the DPJ. The argument goes that by the time Koizumi took over, they had kicked out a lot of the more corrupt parts of their party, of which Ichiro Ozawa was the most notable. Supposedly, these corrupt exiles gathered under the DPJ and tried to run things like old times when they came into power back in '09. Is there any truth to this? I've only been interested in Japanese politics for the past few years and the evidence I've seen for this narrative is mixed at best. The only other guy I heard espouse this idea was a Japanese expat whose politics were pretty much stereotypical 2chan nationalism, so I don't have much faith in it.
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Apr 26, 2013 01:50
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Cameron posted:Sorry if these questions come off a little vague but I'm interested in investing in the Yen and Abe's policies. I'm looking for a general idea about whether or not they will work. I can answer some parts of Question 1: The Yen will most likely not crash because is doesn't have the classic symptoms of other currency crashes in the past 20 or so years: 1) Massive overvaluation combined with pegged currency or 2) being highly indebted to foreign capital and having a shaky financial system. Furthermore, Japan has accumulated the 2nd largest foreign exchange reserves precisely to defend the Yen in such a crisis. The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis taught all of the East Asian countries to use their surpluses to accumulate massive reserves as a defense. I'm just a casual observer of Japan, but Abe printing money doesn't seem surprising. Japan feels that its exports are waning as a result of the Yen being too strong. So, they print a bunch of Yen, dump it on the foreign exchange, weaken the Yen, and watch exports grow. You get some economic activity, business and corporations are happy, seems like a pretty non-controversial and not-crazy economic plan from the Japanese perspective. I doubt that it'll have any effect on Japan's 20+ years of spiraling deflation, though.
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Apr 26, 2013 10:40
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Cameron posted:It's strange how the JPY is tied to policy makers trying to make it weaker. I can't believe that a country would ever want the USA to get stronger so that it can put itself into a submissive export-based position. What is so hard to believe? Japan has had an export-oriented economy for more than a half-century now. One could argue Japan's (and the rest of the East Asian powerhouse economies) miraculous post-war growth comes from its exports. From the Japanese government's perspective, if a strong Yen is hurting such an important part of your economy it makes sense to intervene and weaken it. And it's doubtful the domestic Japanese economy can suddenly increase its consumption of goods in the near future to replace US consumption of Japanese exports. And governments intervening in currencies isn't all that unusual. In the past, countries on the gold standard would essentially hoard gold and gently caress each other over to maintain their exchange rates and benefit their exports. China is infamous now for intervening in its exchange rate. Switzerland has been battling a rush of investors looking for a "safe currency" and appreciating the hell out of the Swiss Franc. The most dramatic intervention I can think of is the 1985 Plaza Accord. It was an agreement by the US, France, the UK, West Germany, and Japan to secretly and simultaneously weaken the US dollar and strengthen the Yen and Deutschmark over concerns of trade imbalances. The effect was most dramatic for the Yen, which went from around 240 Yen per Dollar in 1985 to around 120 Yen per Dollar by 1987. More recently, the G7 economies cooperated in the immediate aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake to intervene and weaken the Yen, which had paradoxically appreciated after the earthquake. The list of currency interventions can go on and on, especially with the Yen.
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Apr 27, 2013 13:49
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ookiimarukochan posted:This would involve Japanese companies being proactive and forward thinking which is a situation that has never happened in the history of the country. The issues currently facing the publishing, animation, and video games industry - for instance - in Japan have been obvious for 10 or 15 years, and no one has even though about trying something to fix them, even though it gets harder the longer they wait. Could you elaborate on those issues? I'd love to hear more about what's happened to those industries.
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Mar 1, 2014 00:24
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| # ¿ May 5, 2024 06:51 |
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CronoGamer posted:While the administration absolutely encouraged people to link 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq I was under the impression that they had very carefully, and underhandedly, not made any direct links between the two. 9/11 was absolutely the justification for going into Afghanistan and attacking the Taliban but Iraq was about WMDs and a vague "harboring terrorists" notion. I don't think that could be used by Japan as "Iraq attacked the US". Hopefully this won't derail the thread anymore, but the administration did directly link 9/11 with Iraq primarily by claiming that the lead hijacker Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague. Here's a video of Cheney (and John McCain, but let's not go down that rabbit hole here) making the claim immediately after 9/11. And for completeness, here's the Wikipedia article dedicated to debunking this particular claim.
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Mar 4, 2014 00:56
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