2024-04-02 09:55:06
Tatsuo Yamazaki, a former finance minister and a specially appointed professor at the International University of Health and Welfare, said that given the recent statements from monetary authorities to prevent the yen’s depreciation, he believes that if the dollar appreciates and the yen depreciates beyond the current trading range, the government will He acknowledged that it would not be surprising if the Bank decided to intervene by buying the yen.
In an interview on the 2nd, former Finance Minister Yamazaki said that the dollar-yen exchange rate, which has been trending at an upper limit of 152 yen to the dollar, has “for some reason gone into a range. If the dollar breaks towards strength, we will intervene.” He said that given recent statements from monetary authorities, he “wouldn’t say something like that unless they were prepared to do so.” It cites the US price index as one of the factors spurring the yen’s depreciation.
On March 27, when the yen was close to 152 yen, the Ministry of Finance, the Financial Services Agency, and the Bank of Japan held a tripartite meeting. After the meeting, Finance Minister Masato Kanda strongly discouraged the market, stating that “it is clear that speculative movements are behind the yen’s recent depreciation,” and indicated that he was willing to intervene, but the trend of the yen’s depreciation has not changed. Not yet. With the government’s statements drawing increasing attention due to concerns regarding intervention, Yamazaki expressed the view that the government is once once more on the verge of war.
During the 2003-2004 yen appreciation phase, Mr. Yamazaki was involved in a large-scale yen selling intervention worth 35 trillion yen as head of the foreign exchange market section. At the time, Finance Minister Kanda served as Mr. Yamazaki’s right-hand man as an assistant section manager. Two days before the government intervened in September 2022 to buy yen and sell dollars for the first time in 24 years, Mr. Yamazaki said that the level of alert had increased and that “it would not be strange at all to intervene.” .
Foreign exchange intervention is “not weird at all,” the government is ready for war – former finance minister Yamazaki
The current tension over possible intervention is similar to last November, when Finance Minister Kanda said that foreign exchange intervention was on “standby.”
In an interview on March 29, Finance Minister Kanda said, “I have a strong sense of discomfort in the sense that the yen is going in the opposite direction,” regarding the yen’s depreciation following the Bank of Japan decided to review large-scale easing, including ending negative interest rates. was.
Regarding the depreciation of the yen following negative interest rates were lifted, Mr. Yamazaki said that contrary to market expectations, “The Bank of Japan continues to say that it will continue to maintain an accommodative environment, and that it is not saying the obvious thing that it will take a path to normalization while looking at the data.” The biggest factor is that there is no such thing.” “As long as negative interest rates have been lifted, the outlook is very different from that of overseas funds, who thought that they would be able to normalize like other central banks.”
The authorities also said, “I feel very strongly that a correction to the yen’s depreciation should occur,” adding that “we are in a situation where we can bullishly intervene” because we have material to persuade the United States. “Not intervening even if the currency reaches 155 yen would completely lose confidence in the monetary authorities,” he said.
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