The Japanese Conundrum with Jack Colreavy - ABSI Episode 27

''But one thing is for sure, a country that continues to fiscally overspend and have its reserve bank purchase the debt to finance the spending will ultimately destroy its currency.''

Jack Colreavy, CFA, discusses the current state of Japan's economy and the reason for its stagnation.

Read the Conversation:

One of the most important Bank of Japan interest rate meetings occurred last week and the market was pricing in them changing TAC and finally ending their loose monetary policy. Unfortunately, they defied market expectations and they maintain their negative interest rates and are maintaining yield curve control of 0 percent on the Japanese 10 year.

Now, the market likes to test this resolve by selling Japanese government bonds into the market, which forces up the yield. This forces the Bank of Japan to purchase bonds to bring the yields back down. And as a result, in the 10 days in January, 1. 4 trillion yen was spent by the Bank of Japan in order to maintain that yield.

And that's ballooned their balance sheet to 565 trillion in Japanese government bonds. They own over 50 percent of all Japanese bonds outstanding, which has all sorts of problems with how the market flows and fluctuates. This is leading to a lot of market participants leaving the Japanese government bond market, which is having disastrous effects on the yen.

The yen has depreciated significantly against all currencies, and there looks to be no sign of recovery unless the Bank of Japan changes tack and starts to ease off this loose monetary policy that they've held in place for almost 30 years. To learn more, please subscribe to As Barclay Sees It by clicking the link in the description.