G7 tackles yen slide with carry trade warning
Sat Feb 10, 2007 12:11pm ET
By Swaha Pattanaik
ESSEN, Germany, Feb 10 (Reuters) - The Group of Seven industrial nations opted on Saturday to address yen weakness by speaking out against currency market bets which have fuelled the yen's slide rather than by criticising Japanese economic policy.
Rather than clubbing Tokyo for keeping interest rates low, a statement issued by G7 finance officials meeting in Essen said they expected markets to take account of economic developments, including a recovering Japanese economy, when assessing risks.
Keen to leave no room for misunderstanding, one G7 official after the other warned of the risk of carry trades, which have helped push the yen to record lows against the euro <EURJPY> as investors have exploited low Japanese interest rates to borrow yen and invest the proceeds in higher-yielding markets.
"It is the joint conviction of the finance ministers and central bank presidents that we want the markets to be aware of the risks of very one-way bets, especially on foreign exchange markets -- that includes the problems in particular from carry trades," German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck told a news conference after chairing the the G7 meeting.
European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet echoed the sentiment at a separate news conference.
"We want the markets to be aware of the risks of one-way bets, in particular on the foreign exchange market," Trichet said, adding he was not talking only about yen-based carry trades.
"One-way bets in the present circumstances would not be, it seems to us, appropriate. We want the markets to be aware of the risks they contain," he said
PERFECT CHORUS
While U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson declined public comment on carry trades, Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge was more forthright.
"Clearly, we do want markets to be aware of the risks of taking one-way bets on anything and so it's there, quite clearly, to say that," Dodge told reporters, refering to the G7 statement.
"Very simply, don't take a one-way bet on where any particular currency or pair of currency relationship is going."
Italian Economy Minister Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa delivered the same message, saying the G7 statement aimed to draw financial markets attention to risks.
"It expresses the desire that the markets should be aware, especially on foreign exchange, that risk is not all one-way," he said at a news conference.
Japan chimed in with a very similarly worded explanation of exactly what the G7 statement intended to convey.
"This means that G7 countries think that markets, particularly forex markets, should recognise the risk of moving in one direction too heavily," Japanese Finance Minister Omi told reporters.
Omi declined to comment on whether the statement was targeting yen carry trades and it was unclear whether strong-arm tactics had been needed to persuade Japan to sign up to the chorus of comments on the risks of one-way trades.
However, a G7 official said it was in Tokyo's own interest to ensure carry trades involving the yen did not burgeon too much. (additional reporting by Jan Strupczewski, Francesca Landini, Hideyuki Sano, Paul Carrel)