Is the Fed Doing What We Think They Should Be Doing -- Buying the Yen?

Markets are betting that Japan may be looking for a way out of an aggressive intervention policy that has seen it sell some 30 trillion yen ($280 billion) between January 2003 and February 2004 to keep the yen from rising. The speculation was triggered by a column in Tuesday's Nikkei Financial Daily that said some Bank of Japan officials thought the central bank would walk away from large-scale intervention by the end of this month, when Japan's fiscal year ends.

While many were sceptical about the report, noting that the BOJ merely acts for the government, later comments by officials -- including Tanigaki's remark that Japan won't intervene if it isn't necessary -- have fuelled speculation of a change. "The market is looking for a retreat in the intervention stance, not an abrupt termination but a gradual retreat," said Tomoko Fujii, market and economic analysis director at Nikko Citigroup. Behind this thinking also lies a growing belief that Japan's recovery is strong enough to cope with a higher yen, especially as the domestic economy shows signs of improving, lessening the recovery's dependence on strong exports. http://www.forbes.com/home_asia/newswire/2004/03/18/rtr1303225.html

SenderBerl: Japan is saying that the gig is up, that it recognizes that the US is now wary of the truth of its plan that when it sold $280 billion of Yen that it wasn't worried because it knew it had nothing at risk and much to gain. When we just told House and Senate Intelligence Committees and you that the Japanese Yen was not only the patriotic thing to buy and what also appeared as a very opportune investment, we are glad to see that they had this already in mind, because it didn't take but ten days for the Yen to reverse its trend as indicated by the graphic. Now, the US economy can really benefit if the Yen moves to par with the dollar and what troubles us is that while we know that this is good for America, whether the NWO leadership really wants it good for America, now featuring the truth regarding the future, that the USA ultimately will be a country whose majority are non whites. This is an issue hidden from the American people due to its racial overtones. However, again, from our perspective it is part and parcel of the religious resolution needed to confront issues and realities instead of sabotaging governments and peoples under the cloak of hidden agendas.

New York Times Mar 18

Hoping the Yen, if Not the Yuan, Will Show Muscle

Even as the Japanese government battles traders in the foreign exchange markets to keep the yen's exchange rate from rising against the dollar, a number of economists on this side of the Pacific are hoping that the markets will win. With China showing no signs of bending to demands from Washington to let the yuan rise, economists say that an increase in the yen's value against the dollar could help spur American exports and reduce the yawning trade gap."It would be good for the United States trade balance," said Ernest H. Preeg, the top trade expert at the Manufacturers Alliance, a business research group in Arlington, Va. "It would be good for U.S. jobs and the manufacturing industry.'' A stronger yen tends to make Japanese exports to the United States more costly, and also gives American exporters a greater competitive edge in Japan. Lately, however, American international economic diplomacy has focused instead on pressuring China to allow the yuan to revalue. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow even threatened to hold China's "feet to the fire" if it did not relax the yuan's decade-long peg of 8.28 to the dollar and let it float so that Chinese exports would not enjoy such a huge price advantage in the American market. Yet even as Washington has been obsessed with China, the other Asian economic colossus - Japan - has been intervening even more intensely to try to keep a lid on the yen. Over the last year, Tokyo has purchased a net total of $180 billion in Treasury bonds, bringing its holdings to $577 billion, nearly four times China's total. "China has been intervening for three or four years,'' Mr. Preeg said. "Japan has been doing it for 10 or 15." Ending Chinese and Japanese currency intervention carries a new set of risks. A rising yen could potentially snuff out Japan's economic recovery. Many in China fear that floating the yuan and eliminating capital controls could damage China's weak banking system. And if China and Japan were to stop intervening in currency markets, the United States government would need to find other buyers for billions of dollars worth of Treasury bonds. But American manufacturers would welcome a rise in any Asian currency. A steep decline in the dollar against the euro over the last year has done little to stimulate American exports, because of Europe's weak economic growth. Even those who would like to see a stronger yen agree that the Bush administration's decision to concentrate on jawboning Beijing instead of Tokyo was not an unreasonable strategy. While the $66 billion bilateral trade deficit with Japan is the second biggest after the deficit with China, it has been relatively stable over the last few years, with both imports and exports falling from their 2000 highs. China's trade surplus with the United States, meanwhile, has almost doubled since 1999 and is now twice the size of Japan's.

SenderBerl: We don't understand why the US would want China to raise the Yuan? It is contradictory to the abyss this government has put us into by allowing corporate America to run our government to eviscerate our internal job and manufacturing sectors of the American economy. Japan on the other hand is guilty because it uses our stupid policies to take a public position of helping us while it back stabs us by using monetization to help the economy to subsidize the cheap Yen until IT IS READY to allow the Yen to rise. Our efforts were to control when the Yen should rise. Allowing Japan to undermine US business during 2003 was crime enough.

The problem is that our woes are multi-dimensional. Here we are on one plateau to help American business, but a government allowing amoral corporations to run and direct our government, especially when they are otherwise blind to the full depth and scope of Japanese tactics, not only blows themselves up but puts permanent nails into the American economy and incurs great damage to the American people, the true and ultimate victims of bad government.

We hate to remind you but when Bill Clinton left office, where did he first go to collect million dollar speaking fees? The answer only suggests the corruption that has undermined our country. The trouble with those greedy people who implement the NWO design is that they see themselves as invincible and beyond the pale of justice. While this may be true on the plane of man, they do have to face the bar of ultimate justice and account for what they have done and what they are doing. This recent episode in Madrid showed Bush and the oil cabal and the NWO group that beyond the reason for the terrorism there is a clear and distinct message for them, their knowing the type of intervention that took place. Can we save ourselves at this point? We don't know. The answer we believe is to get Israel on the correct path and then we believe the world will change from the dark course it currently is upon. We again direct you to our commentary on the Mel Gibson movie as relevant thereto. http://www.rense.com/general49/comm.htm

'Passion' rising toward box-office history
The Passion of the Christ, the movie personally financed by Mel Gibson because no studio thought it commercially viable, could become the highest-grossing film in history.By the end of business Sunday, the subtitled story of Jesus' final hours had grossed $264.5 million in the United States and Canada. The film opened Feb. 25."If The Passion continues on this trajectory, it's possible for it to surpass Star Wars [$461 million] and even Titanic [$600.8 million] as the domestic box-office champion of all time," said Paul Dergarabedian of Exhibitor Relations Inc., which tracks film revenue.

SenderBerl: It will and typical for us we will explain another reason why: those movies' revenues are under-reported to begin with. Gibson is reporting real numbers. Thus, Hollywood is inadvertendtly putting Gibson's movie to the top only assuring it long legs for a movie that many wanted to sabotage: they only have in every way helped make it what it has become today.

JAKARTA, March 18 (Xinhuanet) -- Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) confirmed here on Thursday it will cut production of one million barrels per day although the crude oil price reached 38 US dollars per barrel today. "The OPEC will persist to cut production. If the (oil) price rises today, it is triggered by non-fundamental factors," OPEC President Purnomo Yusgiantoro was quoted by Detikcom online news service as saying. Purnomo, who is the Indonesian minister of energy, cited the political uncertainties in Venezuela, Spain and Iraq as the non-fundamental factors. http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-03/18/content_1373003.htm

SenderBerl: OPEC is saying that life will be miserable for the US in terms of oil until Bush is out of office; that it has enough of his arrogance and of his cabal's intentions to move against OPEC and the damage it has done to the peoples of the Middle East.