Word: dollarization
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...these countries are growing more robustly than the U.S., their interest rates are higher, thus creating a short-term opportunity for traders. Here's how it works with a currency like the Indonesian rupiah: the six-month London Interbank Offer Rate (or LIBOR, the benchmark for U.S. dollar borrowing), is now hovering at slightly less than 1%. That rock-bottom rate stands in stark contrast to the 6.5-7% rate of interest one can get from a short-term money market bill in Indonesia, where the 5-year government bond currently yields roughly 9%. The wide gap between the carrying...
...Although the rupiah could suddenly weaken against the dollar and shave off a significant chunk of a trader's profit, "If your carrying spread is wide enough, you'll comfortably take the currency risk," says Johanna Chua, chief economist with Citigroup in Asia. In fact, Chua says, the dollar carry trade has become so widespread among traders in Asia it has even triggered buying of more exotic and illiquid currencies like the Sri Lankan rupee. "That's the ultimate carry trade," Chua says...
...beleaguered U.S. dollar isn't getting much love these days, except from one small but powerful group: deep-pocketed institutional traders, who are piling into dollars with ever greater enthusiasm because it is so weak and cheap to borrow. "Dollar borrowing picked up steam after the G-20 summit {that ended in Pittsburgh on September 25} when traders concluded that interest rates in the U.S. were going to stay low for a long time," says Mark Matthews, chief Asia strategist for Fox-Pitt Kelton Securities. Adds Olivier Desbarres, a currency strategist for Asia with Credit Suisse: "Hedge funds, pension funds...
...trade in question is known as the "dollar carry trade" because it allows traders to borrow dollars at low rates while investing in another currency that offers a significantly higher short-term yield. One factor behind its growing popularity in Asia is because the other side of the trade - the currency one buys with the dollars one cheaply borrows - are mostly to be found in the Asia-Pacific region. Most coveted, according to traders, are the Australian dollar, the Indonesian rupiah, and even the infrequently circulated Sri Lankan rupee...
...dollar didn't always enjoy the dubious honor of being the global currency a trader could most cheaply borrow. For much of the last decade Japan has been the world's largest moribund economy, with an economy so weak the Bank of Japan never dared to lift interest rates significantly above zero. During this time the Japanese yen was the currency traders loved. No longer, it seems. "The yen has become the least obvious carrying currency," says Credit Suisse's Desbarres, mainly because the near-zero interest rates Japan once exclusively offered are now available from central banks across...