Oh god, Tober! That was hilarious!
The Yen is safe in the regard that it is an economy with a solid base. It's growth has stagnated and its government constantly struggles to find ways to increase growth in the country. Low interest rates are maintained b/c the government is trying to prevent savings and getting people to spend/stimulate demand. The problem though is that what was happening recently was that people borrowed at 1% (I kid u not, Japanese interest rates are that low!) in Japanese Yen and then converted it to AUD and earned a healthy 7% odd in Australia courtesy of those interest rate hikes. This meant that in the good times of years past people actually sold the Yen to invest in Australia creating demand for the AUD helping it to appreciate against the Yen (as it did). The bubble though has burst and people are moving as fast as possible to liquidate any assets in profit territory and then repaying their loans denominated in Yen which means they're selling AUDs. Hence why we are the "whipping boys" at the momentOriginally Posted by MV75
Trust me, the Japanese do not want this problem. B/c as Dirge says the more their currency appreciates the more problems it causes for the Japanese in terms of exports. I wouldn't be surprised if the Reserve Bank and hte Bank of Japan (Japan's equivalent of hte Reserve Bank) have intervened in the past few days since last Thurs/Friday to provide liquidity in the crisis so that neither currency the AUD nor the Yen appreciate or depreciate too much b/c of this hysteria as people rush to sell AUD and buy Yen - overdemand in the latter and oversupply in the former. I haven't thought it thru but it should run something like that.
I had a chat w/ a former associate of mine and he was telling me that volatitliy figures that his firm is measuring are off the scale for hte AUD at the moment. No one honestly has a clue where hte currency is headed in this market and anyone telling you that it will settle to a level in the next few months is full of baloney. According to him and the numbers based on expectations for mining sector, interest rates and inflation, it realistically should settle at 67c but the markets are not performing normally and it'd take a fool to say he knows where were headed. Fundamentals mean nothing in all this.
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