To: mishedlo who wrote (24228 ) 1/8/2005 12:20:22 PM From: russwinter Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 110194 <Japan has hardly intervened for a year. Where is the big treasury blowup that everyone said would happen when Japan stopped buying?> Your use of terminology and word choice is very poor here, and I'm constantly perplexed at your repeated point? Then I come back with data to refute it and you repeat it again. Then you quote others like Heinz (who also fails to do his homework on this critical issue), saying the same thing. Feels like a MoP misinformation campaign, Mish, and not a very good one at that. I guess you just want to be my foil? The argument being made at least by me is that the BOJ (an official buyer)owns (manipulates) is in large measure the buying of US Treasuries, and that is irrefutable, so I just don't see where you get off making these statements. Here we have total foreign purchases of US treasury bonds broken down by sector, "foreign official" which is foreign CBs, versus the private foreign. Year to date it indicates that foreigners bought $307.921 billion in Old Maid cards (US Treasuries), of which $176.743 billion (57.4%) was CB buying. treas.gov Then it breaks it down by country and shows Japan as the biggie buying $131.4 billion YTD (ten months). Note at bottom it indicates that which is "official", and it's 60.6% of all foreign purchases.treas.gov Rhetorical question, why is it that the BOJ does the buying, and not the Japanese exporters that bring the USD home? If Old Maid cards and US debt were such an attraction as you say they are, why wouldn't Japanese private institutions clamour for them? Instead they run right over the window at the BOJ who takes the OMC off their hands at the manipulated rate. You don't have to do currency interventions, when the transaction is between an official entity with a printing press to issue Yen, dealing with a local businessman with USD to exchange.