Now Jay, there you go again with the Lyndon LaRouche black helicopter stuff.
It is not the Japanese government moving it's money to Citibank. It is the Tokyo metropolitan government. This is the opposite of your long-predicted "repatriation" of investments out of the U.S. The article implies that they are doing this because of the shaky condition of the Japanse banks. This sounds like a positive for the dollar and a negative for gold...
Tokyo govt to deposit Y100 bln in Citibank -report
biz.yahoo.com
TOKYO, Aug 17 (Reuters) - The Tokyo metropolitan government, which now has deposits only with Japanese banks, plans to deposit more than 100 billion yen, or $852 million, with major U.S. bank Citibank to diversify risk, the Yomiuri Shimbun said on Saturday.
The report comes after Japan lifted last April a blanket deposit guarantee on time deposits, and ahead of the removal of a similar guarantee on ordinary savings accounts next April.
The move, expected during the current fiscal year to next March, would make the Tokyo metropolitan government the first municipal government in Japan to deposit public funds with a foreign bank, the paper said, citing Tokyo government sources.
Officials for the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Citibank in Japan were not immediately available for comment.
The Tokyo metropolitan government now parks around 1.28 trillion yen at 15 different Japanese banks, but it has decided to review the fund allocation ahead of the lifting of the blanket deposit guarantee on ordinary accounts, Yomiuri said.
On April 1, Japan's central government set a limit of 10 million yen per bank per depositor on refunds of time deposits for banks that collapse.
It plans a similar cap on guarantees for ordinary deposits, checking accounts and similar types of bank savings next April 1.
The plan comes as Japanese banks struggle under a mountain of non-performing loans.
Problem loans at Japanese financial institutions stood at 52.4 trillion yen at the end of March -- about the gross domestic product of Australia, official figures showed this month.
Of that figure, problem loans at banks, including regional banks, stood at 43.2 trillion yen, up 9.6 trillion on the year.
Some experts have much larger estimates of Japanese banks' bad loans, considered by many economists to be the root of a decade-long economic slump. Some experts fear loans outstanding to problem borrowers run to 80 trillion yen or more. ($1=117.35 yen) |
