Word: dollarization
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...while anti-narcotics forces continued to work to wipe out coca's drug-related cultivation, destroy the labs that process it into cocaine and intercept traffickers. But this month's INCB report seeks to end that uneasy arrangement. A big reason is that despite the decades-long, multi-billion-dollar drug war in Latin America, cocaine production has remained stable at best. Criminalizing even traditional coca use may be the only means agencies like the INCB feel they have left to salvage the anti-drug mission. Consuming the raw, unprocessed leaf, says the INCB report, abets "the progression of drug...
Economists are quick to point out that a weak dollar doesn't necessarily mean a strong yen. The exchange rate of the yen to other currencies - such as the euro - still shows depreciation. But the dollar-yen pair heavily weights consumer sentiment and the stock market, says Takahide Kiuchi, chief economist at Nomura Securities, and the rate right now has an overall negative affect...
...weak dollar dumps cold water on some of Japan's largest corporations and exporters, since a higher yen value makes exports from the likes of Sony and Sharp to Toyota and Honda less competitive. On Thursday, Toyota Motor Corp. president Katsuaki Watanabe said that his company will need to maintain profit growth, since it forecast record profit for this fiscal year when the dollar was about 113 yen. For every yen the dollar drops, Toyota's operating profit falls...
Meanwhile, Japanese consumers are faced with a mixed bag. The slight appreciation of the currency helps in capping the rising cost of food and fuel, which have both become concerns due to price inflation. But because dollar-based profits from overseas will drop, corporations could cut back on capital investment and employment, which will have a spillover effect on households. "The negatives outweigh the positives," says Masafumi Yamamoto, head of foreign exchange strategy for Japan at Royal Bank of Scotland...
...Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga did say this week that "excessive exchange rate moves are undesirable." But, in relative terms, the yen is not as weak as it was in 2004, when the government last intervened. Central bankers in Japan believe a rate of 100 yen to the dollar is not excessive appreciation but rather a form of normalization and adjustment. However, though the continuing weakness of the dollar stems from America's subprime crisis and is beyond Tokyo's effective control, its consequences on Japan's economy will be significant. Says Stuart Giles, director for Global Coverage Group at Credit...