Central bankers battle currency market turmoil
Japan moves to prop up the yen against rampant dollar
Financial markets swung wildly yesterday as central banks around the world struggled to navigate a path through surging inflation and a rampant dollar.
interest rates have been hiked from london and Washington to Zurich and Stockholm to keep a lid on spiralling prices – with US aggression sending the dollar soaring.
That yesterday prompted a rare intervention in the currency markets by Japan’s central bank – its first since 1998 – when it stepped in to buy up the battered yen.
The move came after the US Federal Reserve this week hiked rates by threequarters of a percentage point for the third meeting in a row, and signalled there was more to come.
Hours later the Bank of Japan left its key interest rate at less than zero, and the yen fell to a 24year-low against the dollar.
That pushed Japan into supporting its currency by using its dollar reserves to buy the yen, which sent the creaking currency up more than 2pc.
Prime minister Fumio Kishida said the government would ‘take necessary steps decisively in response to excessive fluctuations’ but experts expressed doubts about the strategy.
it was the latest example of the strain being put on the financial world by the dollar’s rampage.
The yen has fallen 19pc against the dollar this year while the pound has tumbled by 17pc and the euro is 13pc off. Yesterday sterling – already near 37-year lows – was on the rack again. it dipped below $1.13 after the Bank of England hiked its main interest rate by 0.5 percentage points. UK bonds meanwhile suffered their biggest sell-off since March 2020.
Falling demand for the bonds – parcels of government debt – pushes up the yields sought by investors and makes public sector borrowing more expensive.
Stock markets also endured a volatile session, with london’s FTSE 100 turning sharply higher before closing 1.1pc down. Paris and Frankfurt dipped by nearly 2pc. a super-strength dollar causes serious imbalances for the global economy.
commodities such as oil that are priced in dollars become more expensive and countries with dollar-denominated debt piles find it harder to service them. But intervening in markets is controversial and earlier this year US Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said it was warranted only in ‘rare and exceptional circumstances’.
analysts at Deutsche Bank doubted Japan’s strategy, saying the reserves needed ‘could become prohibitively costly very quickly’. in Britain, the Bank of England notoriously intervened to defend the pound during an ugly currency sell-off in 1992.
Seven years earlier there was coordinated action to weaken the super-strength dollar. There has been no talk of a repeat of that deal, known as the Plaza accord.
Jane Foley, head of FX strategy at Rabobank, said such an agreement was unlikely until the Fed is confident that inflation is under control. ‘However the question of whether we need one is totally different,’ she added.