Week in FX Asia – Bank of Japan Doubles Bond Buying Weakens Yen

The Bank of Japan (BoJ) captured the attention of the foreign exchange world last week when it started to live up to the expectations of the market. After much anticipation, and lots of preceding rhetoric, Governor Haruhiko Kuroda announced the BoJ’s plan to double its bond buying efforts to reach the 2% inflation target in the allotted two-year window. It was his comments on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s inflation goals while still at the Asian Development Bank that might have won him the top job at the Japanese central bank. Earlier this week, the program kicked into gear and the JPY lost 4% versus the USD and 5% versus the GBP. The main beneficiaries have been Japan’s exporters and holders of Japanese stocks with the Nikkei Index reaching new highs on the value of the yen.

The decision has not been without its critics and some, such as George Soros, cautioned that the fall in the yen could be “an avalanche” that the BoJ could not stop if the Japanese people start to sell the currency. China and South Korea remain critical of the move, branding it a currency war before the Group of Twenty meeting last February. This week, the negative criticism persisted, but the words used were “monetary blackmail” instead of “currency war”. Those ugly words have not been uttered since the Group of Seven made it clear that as long as Japan’s monetary easing means are used for domestic aims, it does not imply unfair currency manipulation.

 

WEEK AHEAD

* CNY Real GDP
* AUD RBA Policy Meeting Minutes
* GBP Consumer Price Index
* EUR Euro-Zone Consumer Price Index
* EUR German ZEW Survey (Economic Sentiment)
* USD Consumer Price Index
* NZD Consumer Prices Index
* GBP Bank of England Minutes
* CAD Bank of Canada Rate Decision
* USD U.S. Federal Reserve Releases Beige Book
* CAD Consumer Price Index

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza