Tag Archive: Japan

History of Bank of Japan Interventions

We show the history of Japanese FX interventions. The Japanese only intervened when the USD/JPY was under 80. Therefore the 2016 FX intervention threads at 108 are ridiculous. As opposed to the Swiss National Bank, the Japanese only talk, they do not fight.

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Big Players (Read: Governments) Make Markets Unsafe

Authored by Steve H. Hanke of the Johns Hopkins University. Follow him on Twitter @Steve_Hanke. Reportage in The Wall Street Journal on April 4th states that “A fund owned by China’s foreign-exchange regulator has been taking stakes in some of the co...

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Central Banks Shiny New Tool: Cash-Escape-Inhibitors

Submitted by JP Koning via Moneyness blog, Negative interests rates are the shiny new thing that everyone wants to talk about. I hate to ruin a good plot line, but they're actually kind of boring; just conventional monetary policy except in negative ...

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How Italy will fail and drag down the European Project

Italy is big enough to matter (it is the eight largest economy on the planet), but so uneventful that most does not pay any attention to what is going on there. We contend that Italy will, during the next year or two, be on everyone’s radar screen as it has the potential to derail the European project for real.

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Are Central Banks Setting Each Other Up?

Authored by Mark St.Cyr, There are times you try to connect the dots. There are others where those connections warrant adorning your trusted tin-foiled cap of choice; for you just can’t get there unless you do. This I believe is one of those time...

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Swiss Politicians Slam Attempts To Eliminate Cash, Compare Paper Money To A Gun Defending Freedom

As we predicted over a year ago, in a world in which QE has failed, and in which the ice-cold grip of NIRP has to be global in order to achieve its intended purpose of forcing savers around the world to spend the taxed product of their labor, one thi...

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Global Stocks Soar On Stimulus Hopes After Miserable Chinese, Japanese Data; Short Squeeze

Bad news is once again good news... for stocks that is.  After a month and a half of markets unable to decide if they should buy or sell on ugly data, over the weekend, People’s Bank of China Governor Zhou Xiaochuan expressed faith in the economy, ...

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The Chinese Yuan Countdown Is On

Submitted by SaxoBank's Dembik Christopher via TradingFloor.com, Currency stability is a prerequisite for China's economic transition Defending the yuan is prohibitively expensive – China cannot beat the market Progressive devaluation managed by PBoC...

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How Low Can The Bank Of Japan Cut Rates? Ask Gold

As we noted last night, in what was the second clear example of sheer desperation by the Bank of Japan, the central banker formerly known as Peter Pan for his on the record belief that "he should fly", and as of this morning better known as Peter Pan...

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BoJ Adopts Negative Interest Rates, Fails To Increase QE

Well that did not last long. After initial exuberance over The BoJ's wishy-washy decision to adopt a 3-tiered rate policy including NIRP, markets have realized that without further asset purchases (which were maintained at the current pace), there is...

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You Know Negative Interest Rates Are Bad When…

Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com, Switzerland is famous for being punctual. The trains. The buses. The meticulously crafted, hand polished luxury watches. The Swiss are so culturally punctual that they even tend to pay their taxes well i...

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(2.6) CPI-based Real Effective Exchange Rate Since 1965: Yen Still Most Overvalued Currency

If we calculate Real Effective Exchange rates on the base year 1965, the Japanese yen remains the most overvalued currency. This analysis is based on the real effective exchange rate (REER) provided by the Bank of International Settlement (BIS) and a consumer price-index adjusted exchange rate. The real value of the yen is around 50% higher than 1965, the same applies to the Swiss franc.

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(8) Currency Wars: How to Push and Talk Down Your Currency?

Direct or indirect intervention is credible only in countries where domestic asset prices are undervalued and CPI/asset price inflation are no issues. Otherwise they create medium-term risks.

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Michael Pettis: Abenomics is just a measure to enforce higher household savings

This article by Michael Pettis remains one of the most important contributions on Abenomics. If anybody wondered by GDP contracted in 2014. It is not only the sales tax but even more the weak yen that forces people to save more. Both companies and finally also consumers are savings more. Companies do not invest.

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Financial Cycles History, 1998-2002: The Dotcom Bubble and Bust and European and Asian Austerity as its Enabler

In this post we present financial and credit cycles in the history: Due a weak credit cycle, Germany was a weak economy under many other weak ones.

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Cultural Reasons for Japan’s Deflation: Can the U.S. Go into a Balance Sheet Recession?

The power distance between employer and employee enforces the importance of the leader, the entrepreneur. Moreover, the collectivite Asian society does not want unemployment, employees prefer to renounce to salary hikes in favor of the collective. These cultural reasons can qualify as drivers of the Japanese balance sheet recession.

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Swiss GDP Details Compared to UK, USA, Germany, Japan and Australia, Q3 2013

The Swiss GDP was again one of the strongest major economies. The quarterly growth rate in the third quarter was 0.5%, the yearly one 1.9%. U.S. GDP improved by 3.6% QoQ annualized. For comparison purposes, our figures are not annualized; hence the equivalent is 0.9% QoQ. In Japan and Switzerland private consumption rose by 0.1% … Continue reading...

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