Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda changed the course of global markets when he unleashed a $3.4 trillion firehose of Japanese cash on the investment world. Now Kazuo Ueda is likely to dismantle his legacy, setting the stage for a flow reversal that risks sending shockwaves through the global economy.
Just over a week before a momentous leadership change at the BOJ, investors are gearing up for the seemingly inevitable end to a decade of ultralow interest rates that punished domestic savers and sent a wall of money overseas. The exodus accelerated after Kuroda moved to suppress bond yields in 2016, culminating in a mountain of offshore investments worth more than two-thirds of Japan’s economy.
All this risks unraveling under the new governor Ueda, who may have little choice but to end the world’s boldest easy-money experiment just as rising interest rates elsewhere are already jolting the international banking sector and threatening financial stability. The stakes are enormous: Japanese investors are the biggest foreign holders of U.S. government bonds and own everything from Brazilian debt to European power stations to bundles of risky loans stateside.
An increase in Japan’s borrowing costs threatens to amplify the swings in global bond markets, which are being rocked by the U.S. Federal Reserve’s yearlong campaign to combat inflation and the new danger of a credit crunch. Against this backdrop, tighter monetary policy by the BOJ is likely to intensify scrutiny of its country’s lenders in the wake of recent bank turmoil in the U.S. and Europe.
www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/04/01/business/boj-market-turmoil/