The yield on Japan’s benchmark 10-year government bonds breached the central bank’s new ceiling on Friday in the market’s most direct challenge yet to decades of uber-easy monetary policy, before a wave of emergency bond buying reined it back in.
Swirling speculation that the Bank of Japan’s policy of yield curve control (YCC) could be revised, or even abandoned, as early as next week had investors rushing for the exits.
That catapulted 10-year Japanese government bond yields as much as 4 basis points higher to 0.54%, the highest since mid-2015 and above a recently widened band of -0.5% to +0.5% set by the BOJ in a shock decision just three weeks ago.
Onions are so expensive in the Philippines that they’re being smuggled into the country
From salads to stews, the humble onion is a key ingredient in nearly every Filipino dish. But now, the vegetable costs almost three times more than chicken in the Philippines.
Red and white onions were selling for as much as 600 Philippine pesos (US$11) per kilogram (2.2 lbs) on Monday, compared to 220 pesos ($4) per kilogram for chicken, according to the country’s Department of Agriculture.
Even beef brisket is 30% cheaper than onions by weight as the price of a kilogram of the allium has soared higher than the daily minimum wage.
Joey Salceda, resident economist at the Philippine House of Representatives, lamented Sunday that the country now has the “world’s most expensive domestic onion prices,” while Filipinos have flooded social media to complain about the sky-high prices.
The price surge comes after a spate of super typhoons hit the Philippines last year, damaging tens of billions of pesos worth of crops. The Southeast Asian country has been grappling with soaring inflation in recent months, with consumer prices jumping 8.1% in December, hitting a 14-year high, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority.
