Insanity: Japanese Government

The Japanese government must be totally out of their minds. Which is worst the US government of the Japanese? Hmmm. Good question:

MISTER ROGERS - YOU CAN NEVER GO DOWN THE DRAIN

On August 4th, I wrote a short blog post entitled the Japanese Central Bank Throws Away a Billion Dollars Again. It was another protest over the Japanese government repeating past mistakes by using tax monies to buy dollars to support the yen. I wrote:


This morning when I woke up I checked the financial markets, gold, silver and, of course, the dollar yen rate.

I was somewhat surprised to see the yen at ¥76.9-something to the US dollar. A hour or two later, the yen had dropped to its current ¥78.9 per US dollar. Obviously the Japanese Central Bank intervened and bought a bunch of dollars.

Fools. When will they ever learn? They keep throwing our hard earned tax money down the drain to stop the yen's rise, but it is all in vain as the yen's appreciation continues.


I would later learn that it wasn't a "billion dollars" (of course not!) but $56 billion dollars. I wrote that history would repeat itself and that these types of market interventions never work. Japan has tried this sort of thing over and over and the results are always the same; they may halt, temporarily, the rise of the yen, but they cannot stop the yen from rising as interventions do nothing to change market fundamentals.


Remember, less than one year ago, for the first time in 15 years, in Sept. of 2010 when Japan intervened to stop the yen's rise?


From Bloomberg: 

Japan intervened in the foreign-exchange market for the first time since 2004 after a surge in the yen to the strongest against the dollar in 15 years threatened to stunt the nation’s economic recovery.

Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda confirmed the intervention, speaking to reporters today in Tokyo. He said Japan contacted other nations about the step, without specifying that today’s measure was taken unilaterally. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku said the ministry considers 82 per dollar to be the line of defense, after it reached a high of 82.88 earlier today.

Japan hadn’t intervened to sell yen in the foreign-exchange market since 2004, when the yen was around 109 per dollar. The Bank of Japan, acting on behest of the Ministry of Finance, sold 14.8 trillion yen in the first three months of 2004, after record sales of 20.4 trillion yen in 2003. Noda didn’t say how much was used in today’s action, while that figure will be released at a later date.

Japan is now slipping down a very dangerous slope and I fear that the slide is increasing in velocity. This makes for at least three publicly announced interventions in less than one year.


As I wrote, interventions never work. Mish Shedlock sensei! back me up on this one, will you? 


Japan Announces Currency and Stock Market Interventions: 

Countries are now playing a game of "Top This" to see who can do the dumbest things.... If stocks are ready to go up they will. If not they won't. Intervention will accomplish nothing other than create an environment of suspicion that stocks need to be propped up or they would fall. When intervention starts, investors are deprived of normal market signals and will not know if share prices have really bottomed or not. This silliness by Japan is going to create massive mistrust, and massive mistrust is never good for the markets.

I write over and over until my fingers are bleeding that the government is run by idiots. For over twenty years, the clowns "at the helm" of the Japanese government have been creating debt and trying to manipulate the markets. We have the current situation to show for it: Massive public debt and an economy mired in the mud.

Last year's currency intervention was to stop the yen when it was at about ¥82 to the US dollar. The Japanese Central Bank threw $63 billion dollars at the problem then. 

FIVE DAYS ago, the yen and dollar rate was ¥76.9 yen to one US dollar. The Japanese government threw $56 billion dollars at that. They were patting themselves on the back because the yen quickly shot past ¥80 to the US dollar. That was on August 4, 2011.

As of 6:38 am Aug. 9, 2011

Now, today, it is August 9, 2011 and the yen - dollar rate sits at ¥77.77 to one US dollar. The intervention, after a short five days is shown to be a total failure.

The most laughable part of this is the Japanese Finance Minister Yoda, Noda, whatever his name is actually said:

"It's better to wait for a little while before judging the impact of intervention," he told a news conference.




That's like the big race at the horse track. The results have been made official, the winning horse has already been claimed winner and is already in the winner's circle and Noda is holding a losing ticket. Yet he says, "We'd better wait awhile. There might be a claim!"

Ha! Ha! Ha!

The Dow Jones stock market crashed today 5.55% (-634.76). The Nikkei will follow suit. The yen is almost back to where it was a week ago.

What's the Japanese government solution to the problem?

Intervene to support the yen! Reuters reports "Japan signals readiness to intervene again":

Economics Minister Kaoru Yosano warned markets on Friday that they should not assume that Tokyo is done with stepping into the market, while stressing again the need for Japan, Europe and the United States to adopt common policies to contain the pessimism about the global economy. 

Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results... - Albert Einstein