Quote:
Originally Posted by V
Not all currencies. The JPY has absolutely crushed the USD. It's been amazing to watch, really.
As for why? Who knows. I just read the chart and figure out where things are going from there. It works well enough.
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During the Japanese banking crisis they cut their central rate down to 0. Even since, it has not risen up to match other countries.
So traders would borrow for low rates from Japan, and invest them in other countries with higher rates.
Now the people that did this see the countries where they invested dropping the rates like Japan did, and they start pulling out of those investments. So they sell those instruments and, in order to pay off the Japanese loans they buy up the Yen. This increases the supply of the foreign currencies and increases the demand for the Yen. The AUS $ is getting the crap kicked out of it right now.
And of course, as the Yen becomes more valuable, people who borrowed in Yen then converted to foreign currencies are now seeing those foreign investments dropping in value (relative to the Yen) and they are getting scared and "feeding the bear".
Generally, the way to offset this would be to raise interest rates to offset the decline in the value of the currency. But banks can't do that because the last thing they want is to shrink the credit market.