The yen is trading at its lowest level against the U.S. dollar
in six months after Japanese prime minister Yoshihiko Noda held
up his end of a bargain struck with the opposition parties and
called an election for December 16. The Diet will be dissolved on
Friday and campaigning will begin for the control of the House of
Representatives (Lower House).
Japan had been facing its own fiscal cliff due to the refusal
of the major opposition parties, the Liberal Democratic Party (
LDP
) and the Komeito, to authorize deficit spending for the current
fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2013, unless Noda, head of
the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) set a date for the
election.
Japanese law requires that the Lower House specifically
authorize deficit spending before the government is allowed to
issue bonds to finance the deficit. The political stalemate had
been jeopardizing the efforts to rebuild after last year's
devastating earthquake and tsunami along Japan's northeast
coast.
After a series of closed door meetings. Noda and the leaders
of the LDP and Komeito announced that they had reached an
agreement to authorize the deficit spending, avoiding a
government shutdown. Although Noda did not announce the date of
the election immediately, he did so within a few days.
Voters have lost faith in the ability of the DPJ to govern
following a series of scandals and missteps before, during and
after the earthquake. Most observers think that the DPJ will lose
the election but there is little voter support for the opposition
LDP.
In fact, the politics is getting really messy as there has
been a rush of DPJ Diet members leaving the party, either to join
the LDP or one of the two new parties that have been set up to
attract DPJ defectors. At this point, it seems likely that the
new government will have to be a coalition but it is anyone's
guess how that will turn out.
That's the reality of the situation.
The market is selling the yen because, according to
Bloomberg
, Shinzo Abe, who was prime minister in 2006 and 2007 and leads
the LDP today, "…called for the central bank to provide unlimited
stimulus."
"The leader of Japan's opposition is coming down quite
heavily, saying what he would like the Bank of Japan to do in
terms of easing and that's pressuring the yen," Jane Foley, a
senior currency strategist at Rabobank International in London
told Bloomberg.
Reuters
commented, "Shinzo Abe, the head of Japan's Liberal Democratic
Party and frontrunner in next month's election, wants the Bank of
Japan to consider sub-zero interest rates and reverse the yen's
strength." The Reuters article continued, ""Signs that the LDP
will step up efforts to weaken the yen if it comes to power
prompted investors to sell the currency against both the dollar
and the euro."
The idea of negative interest rates is really just election
rhetoric. Japan has had negative overnight rates several times
during the height of the banking crisis about ten years ago and
it wasn't pretty. Negative interest rates did not appreciably
weaken the yen at that time.
What we can say is that the yen seems to have been somewhat
overbought and was due for a correction. Even an LDP victory is
unlikely to change Bank of Japan policy very much because, with
interest rates already at zero, there isn't much more that a
central bank can do.
Traders who want to play the yen's current volatility through
ETFs
should look at the Ryder CurrencyShares Japanese Yen Trust (NYSE:
FXY
) or the ProShares Ultra Short Yen (NYSE:
YCS
), both of which offer adequate liquidity for retail investors.
The ProShares Ultra Yen (NYSE:
YCL
) and the Wisdom Tree Dreyfus Japanese Yen Fund (NYSE:
JYF
) a seem to be relatively illiquid at this time.
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