[dead]
US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market
11–20 of 218 posts
Re: US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market
#12Japan is the sort of canary in the coal mine. so yeah if the yen pops - then the u.s will too given all the 'a.i' shenanigans & the market manipulation with oil. but I guess the US Treasurer is willing to manipulate the market till they can't.
If you can manipulate the market why not do it? Literally no one benefits from the alternative.
> Literally no one benefits from the alternative.
Future you might disagree with present you. But even if we disregard time, I think millions of consumers would benefit from the opportunity to have competitive markets again. If an actual economic forest fire was allowed to burn, we might eliminate some of the too-big-to-fail corruption and oligopoly that is the norm now and provide space for new seeds to grow.
Re: US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market
#13Can anyone steel man the “this isn’t a big deal” side of this? On x and reddit all I see are sky is falling posts.
Why would the sky be falling? Getting the world's largest economy to prop up your own economy is kind of the point to being an ally of the biggest economy in the world; the Japanese and American governments being in bed together and planning the Japanese economy is not just normal, but is one of the bigger conspiracy theories persisting from the 1980s when US intervention is blamed as the reason Japan's economy stagnated in the 90s. So I don't understand why this would be a sky is falling moment.
Re: US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market
#14Can anyone steel man the “this isn’t a big deal” side of this? On x and reddit all I see are sky is falling posts.
Here’s the likely rationale from one of the FT comments:
“It looks like the Japanese economy is on the BoJ [Bank of Japan] ventilators. I mean, the BoJ is the largest single holder of Japanese equities, government bonds (JGBs) and currency (JPY). It’s likely that the BoJ is printing more yen to finance Japan Inc, which in turn is probably the driving force behind inflation.
[…]
BoJ is the largest foreign bank holding USTs [US treasuries], around $1.14tn, it’s likely that they would have had to sell some treasuries to finance JPY purchases. My view is that, this scenario is not ideal for the US Treasury – particularly right now with the UST yield curve steepening – hence they had to “return the favour” by selling EURJPY”
—-
tl;dr in my layman interpretation: US helps Japan by selling (shorting) EU in a debt-exchange triangle. The US didn’t have much choice, as Japan would have sold USD, which they hold plenty of, to finance their spending spree. They just have to hope their bet on JPY vs EUR pays off in the long-term.
Re: US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market
#15Can anyone steel man the “this isn’t a big deal” side of this? On x and reddit all I see are sky is falling posts.
Not really what you asked for, but what I would say is that this specific incident isn't like some huge deal or something. It's just the USA doing something that helps Japan stabilize its currency, and helps the USA avoid a spike in people selling US treasuries (which would raise US borrowing costs).
It's unusual, but not earth shattering or crazy.
____________________
The wider picture looks rather worrysome though. Japan has spent decades building up a nest egg of US treasuries as a way to try and fight of deflation. Now, they have inflation and currency depreciation, so the extremely natural thing to do is for Japan to sell their accumulated assets to defend their currency and dampen inflation.
The USA on the other hand has been going around with a fork and sticking it in electrical sockets, and has earned a reputation for being extremely erratic and unfocused on stability. The USA also has zero plan or intention to get its debt burden under control.
This makes investors who hold US treasuries nervous. They see increasing geopolitical instability, increasing political disfunction in the USA, and the early stages of a USA debt crisis that could end in debt defaults (Bessent has already actually hinted at this, when he suggested unilaterally converting some already sold bonds to '100 year bonds').
This situation has caused US borrowing costs to go up, and japan switching from a net treasury buyer to a net treasury seller would make it harder for the USA to sell more bonds without giving even higher interest rates, which just makes the current debt troubles worse.
Re: US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market
#16Japan is the sort of canary in the coal mine. so yeah if the yen pops - then the u.s will too given all the 'a.i' shenanigans & the market manipulation with oil. but I guess the US Treasurer is willing to manipulate the market till they can't.
Japan is a what? They've been dumping billions of dollars and trillions of yen into their economy since the 1990s. How is this any different than the past thirty years of intervention? I stg you guys. I get that ginning up a conspiracy gives you agency in a powerless world but come on.
Re: US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market
#17Can anyone steel man the “this isn’t a big deal” side of this? On x and reddit all I see are sky is falling posts.
FX interventions are nothing new and 3% isn't nothing but it's not that much. The sun will rise in the morning, nbd.
Re: US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market
#18Can anyone steel man the “this isn’t a big deal” side of this? On x and reddit all I see are sky is falling posts.
Not really what you asked for, but what I would say is that this specific incident isn't like some huge deal or something. It's just the USA doing something that helps Japan stabilize its currency, and helps the USA avoid a spike in people selling US treasuries (which would raise US borrowing costs). It's unusual, but not earth shattering or crazy. ____________________ The wider picture looks rather worrysome though.…
Don’t forget the EUR side to the operation. US is helping Japan by selling Euros. The big question whether this is a sensible bet.
Re: US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really what you asked for, but what I would say is that this specific incident isn't like some huge deal or something. It's just the USA doing something that helps Japan stabilize its currency, and helps the USA avoid a spike in people selling US treasuries (which would raise US borrowing costs). It's unusual, but not earth shattering or crazy. ____________________ The wider picture looks rather worrysome though.…
Don’t forget the EUR side to the operation. US is helping Japan by selling Euros. The big question whether this is a sensible bet.
As a European, I'm somewhat sensitive to that side of things, but if you look at the USD-EUR exchange rates, the Euro has only strengthened against the USD since this happened.
I guess it's just not a big enough shift to change the overall USD-EUR dynamics. Plus, I think a lot of the Eurozone wouldn't actually mind if the Euro weakened a litte, even if it'd make the current energy price problems worse.
But even if the USD did liquidate enough Euros to shift the dynamics, and if this was decided to be a bad thing, the Eurozone countries hold way more US treasuries than Japan, and could just sell those if they wanted to, which could quickly bring things back into balance, and would be a major deterrent against the US.
Re: US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market
#20Japan holds a huge amount of US treasuries, and I guess was considering a mass sell off to raise cash to defend the Yen. US treasury bond yields are already dangerously high for the US and Japan selling treasuries would push yields up even higher, and could trigger more panic selling from others. I guess this is Bessent's scheme to try and kick that can down the road.
[flagged]