Yen intervention shows Asia is losing patience with the mighty US dollar

Indonesia and Taiwan also recently took steps to shore up their currencies

- Ovais Subhani

The yen's sharp rebound earlier this week may have cost some currency traders dearly, but the Japanese currency is still near its multi-decade lows while the fundamental reasons for its weakness have far from disappeared.

The culprit is Japan's relatively low benchmark interest rates, which are needed to support the economy's recent ascent from 30 years of deflation and keep interest payments on its massive debt manageable.

Those low rates will keep the yen weak against currencies of its major trading partners, including Singapore, where rates are much higher and economic growth resilient.

The inevitability of the yen's weakness illustrates just how helpless and increasingly impatient Asian policymakers are in the face of the relentless strength of the American dollar.

Although the Japanese authorities have made no comments, Bank of Japan data released a day after the April 29 intervention showed that it sold US$35 billion to buy 5.5 trillion yen and, in the process, lifted the currency from a 34-year low of about 160 to a US dollar.

The intervention did help the yen jump to 155 to the US dollar on April 29, but it retreated to around 157.80 early on May 1. It also reversed course against the Singapore dollar - rising 1.4 per cent to 114.5 yen on April 29, but slipping back on May 1 to a record low of 115.58 yen.

Currency interventions are usually seen as an attempt by the authorities to draw a line in the sand. But analysts, such as Mr Dirk Willer, Citibank's global head of macro and emerging market strategy, believe that it would be hard to defend the 160-yen level unless Japan convinces markets that it is on a path to raising interest rates.