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US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market

ft.com

31–40 of 219 posts

Re: US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market

#31
post #10

Can 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.

Best I can do is point out that much of American economic history for the past 300 years has been stumbling from crisis to crisis, and somehow we muddle through. A good book to understand this is https://a.co/d/0aTW4L6D

Re: US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market

#33
post #6

Japan 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.

While I don't agree with the phrasing of the above comment it doesn't seem factually wrong?

The article states similar coordinated currency manipulation (to instead weaken the yen) happened in 2011 after the Tohoku earthquake. There was a bunch of mutual currency manipulation in the 1990s by the US and Japan.[1] In the 1980s there was the Plaza and Louvre accords. [2][3] And you can find more going all the way back to end of World War 2.

The main interesting difference in the current intervention is that the US is selling euros (not dollars) to buy yen.

[1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w8914

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaza_Accord

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louvre_Accord

Re: US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market

#34
post #24

Japan 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.

Japan has to sell off its bonds to get dollars to buy oil with since oil is so expensive. I wonder why that happened.

[deleted]

Re: US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market

#36
post #24

Japan 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.

Japan has to sell off its bonds to get dollars to buy oil with since oil is so expensive. I wonder why that happened.

No. That has nothing to do with this.

Setting aside the obvious fact that the BOJ does not buy oil, they’ve been engaged in a (futile) currency defense scheme since long before the Iran conflict. This is purely about the interest rate spread.

Re: US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market

#37

Wait, no way! Someone posted a zoomed up photo of a US official (can't recall who) of a notepad a few days ago saying "To do: Buy Yen 5Y - 10Y" or something similar

Bessent wrote that note very large and intentionally left it visible in hopes that it would be photographed and the market would do the work for him. If the market believes the US Government is going to spend $10B on JPY, it will happily price it right in without the US having to spend a penny.

Re: US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market

#38
post #14
post #10

Can 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…

> hope their bet on JPY vs EUR pays off in the long-term

Which bet?

Re: US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market

#39

Wait, no way! Someone posted a zoomed up photo of a US official (can't recall who) of a notepad a few days ago saying "To do: Buy Yen 5Y - 10Y" or something similar

Which is hilarious because 5-10 billion dollars worth of Yen is not going to do much in the grand scheme of things. It’s a speed bump not a stop sign.

Re: US Treasury undertakes historic intervention in yen market

#40

Wait, no way! Someone posted a zoomed up photo of a US official (can't recall who) of a notepad a few days ago saying "To do: Buy Yen 5Y - 10Y" or something similar

It was US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/bessents-to-do-li...

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