Word: yen
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...region. But as its export growth and foreign investment slow under competitive pressures, Beijing seems to be nearing its pain threshold. According to an economist with access to China's leaders, they are contemplating an early 1999 devaluation that could reach 30%, depending on how far the Japanese yen drops. With the rest of Asia struggling to find a way out of recession, such a move could set off a new round-robin of devaluations. China knows the stakes for itself as well: it has seen how lowering rates in Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, Indonesia and Russia gutted those economies...
Naturally China is eager to reassure potential foreign investors at this parlous moment. But another steep drop of the yen against the dollar, making the renminbi less competitive, would force Beijing's hand. Even if China does go ahead, experts say, the effect would be less severe than the shock of the ruble's fall...
...Beatles song, and yet who would want to hear Free as a Bird more than once? Sometimes the appeal is more than mere novelty: a discarded thought can be more revealing, more intimate than a finished work; it's like catching an old friend off guard. A yen for uncooked art, for malleable art, is also more in keeping with our crude, relativistic times...
...currency speculators, having knocked off Asia's weaklings, such as the Thai baht and the Malaysian ringgit, are now taking on the region's Godzillas: the Japanese yen, the Hong Kong dollar and the Chinese renminbi. The three are relatively stable, buttressed by huge economies and, in the case of the renminbi and the HKD, by solid "pegs" to the U.S. dollar that the Chinese government has pledged to defend--even at tremendous national cost...
That cost is growing. Last Tuesday the yen hit a new low--about 147 to the U.S. dollar--and the region hiccuped with pain. The cheap yen was a strong signal to investors who were betting that Asia has farther down to go before it takes any steps up. On international markets, it was the yen slip that triggered the attack against the HKD. During a weeklong run-and-gun battle between speculators and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the peg remained firm. (The HKD is pegged to the U.S. dollar at a ratio of 7.8 to 1.) A defiant...