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In a turnaround from 2022, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration's latest infrastructure bond offering is proving popular with investors.
Yen Keeps Sliding |
The dollar has shown big gains against the Japanese yen, reaching a 26-month high near ¥118 in early November, mainly as a result of interest-rate considerations, analysts say. The Bank of Japan has kept rates near zero since 2001 and will move cautiously in raising rates next year, analysts say.
Given the lingering deflationary forces in Japan, the weaker yen may be quietly welcomed by officials and may help boost already-strong corporate earnings, according to Chandler. “Thus, contrary to conventional wisdom, which had expected a rising Nikkei stock average to be good for the yen, a weaker yen may actually be supportive of Japanese share prices in the current environment,” he says. Michael Woolfolk, senior currency strategist at the Bank of New York, says strong US economic growth, rising rates and contained inflation are all lining up in favor of continued strength in the dollar. The personal consumption expenditures, or PCE, core index, Greenspan’s favored quarterly measure of inflation, actually eased to 1.3% in the third quarter from 1.7% in the second quarter. “This should provide some comfort to ongoing concerns over rising inflationary risks outside of energy prices,” Woolfolk says. Meanwhile, the third-quarter US gross domestic product report, which showed an increase of 3.8% at an annualized rate, was everything it was advertised to be and more, he says. “While the Fed has adopted a more hawkish stance since Hurricane Katrina, the nomination of Ben Bernanke has curbed some of the enthusiasm for the dollar based upon the market’s assessment of him as being more dovish than Greenspan,” Woolfolk says. |
Deficits Detract |
The dollar may well press higher based on interest-rate considerations, Gilmore says, but the higher it goes, the harder it will fall, due to structural problems related to the US budget and trade deficits, he says. “I think it is inevitable that the wheels will come off,” he asserts.
Many currency analysts at the major banks continue to forecast a weaker dollar over the medium to longer term, and they warn that the US eventually will need to address the steady deterioration in the current account deficit. Interest rates are the main influence on the market at the moment, says Chandler of Brown Brothers Harriman. “When the Fed is tightening policy, cyclical factors such as economic-growth differentials and interest-rate differentials offset worries about the current account,” he says. “Interest rates do a better job of explaining both the dollar’s decline from 2001 through 2004 and its strength this year than does the current account,” he notes. For now, the dollar will remain strong, as generally good US economic data and comments from Fed officials, including Greenspan, reinforce expectations of additional tightening in monetary policy going forward, says Robert Lynch, head of Group of 10 foreign exchange strategy, the Americas, at HSBC Bank in New York. But a key message to take away from the ECB’s November press conference is that the central bank could move on rates at any time, he says. The perceived risk for an ECB tightening will again be a factor in the market as the December ECB policy meeting approaches, he adds. The ECB confirmed in early November that if the eurozone growth outlook continues to improve, policy would have to become less accommodative in coming months, says José Luis Alzola, European economist at Citigroup in London. “But contrary to some market fears, the ECB stopped short of indicating that an interest rate hike was imminent,” he says. If the European recovery continues to gather steam, the ECB likely will begin a gradual tightening cycle sometime around next March, Alzola says. As long as underlying inflation and price expectations are contained, the ECB would be willing to let the recovery strengthen before moving to raise rates, according to Alzola. |
China Is Cautious |
China will move very cautiously in allowing the yuan to appreciate, says Marc Chandler of Brown Brothers Harriman. “There is an old saying in China: ‘To cross a river, step on the stones,’” he says. China is not fully using its existing trading band of plus or minus 0.3% in the yuan against the dollar, so there is no immediate need to widen the band, he asserts.
It is possible, however, that China will widen the permitted trading range slightly to about 0.5% sometime in the first half of next year, Chandler says. The Bank of Japan also will be cautious in ending its policy of quantitative ease, under which it has been flooding the banking system with reserves, he says. The Japanese central bank has made it clear that the end of quantitative ease will not imply an immediate increase in interest rates, Chandler says. First, it will begin slowly reducing its target for bank reserves. Only later will it set an interest-rate target greater than zero, and then it will move very gradually in raising short-term rates. Japan’s monetary-base growth rate has accelerated rapidly in recent months, which could be negative for the yen, according to currency analysts at Barclays Capital. Japan’s adjusted monetary base increased by 10.1% in October from the level of three months earlier, the highest growth since July 2003, according to the Japanese central bank. This could mean that the circulation of money in the banking system has increased due to the end of the banking-sector crisis and that an increase of bank lending is driving monetary growth higher, the Barclays analysts say. The more money that is printed, the weaker the yen is likely to become, they say. Elsewhere in Asia, Indonesia’s central bank raised its benchmark interest rate by 125 basis points to 12.25% on November 1, following a much sharper-than-expected increase in inflation. Indonesia’s consumer price inflation jumped to 17.9% in October when the government more than doubled fuel prices by ending subsidies that kept the country’s energy prices well below world levels. Analysts say the central bank had little choice but to act, for if it had failed to raise interest rates, the rupiah would have fallen further, putting even more upward pressure on inflation. |
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