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To: Zardoz who wrote (21417)	10/11/1998 6:19:00 PM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116762

A night with Sharon Stone is worth a king's ransom because her hair is the colour of wheat and she wears and earns a lot of gold. She needs to work on her attitude though for my money. I was thinking of a bead of sweat from a Bactrian hauler of Myhrr most men would agree is worth a 1000 dinaris. Indisputable things like that. Is one man hour of labour in Georgia worth the same as one man hour of labour in Djibouti? If it is then should the Djbouti farkas be worth the same as the Merican papa dorrah? EC<:-}

To: Zardoz who wrote (21417)	10/11/1998 9:27:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 116762

Well, should we able to get to 150 yen, or even 130? Lot rides on this answer, as Indiana Jones would say one must choose wisely... ANALYSIS-Yen rise disaster for Japan,perhaps world 04:00 a.m. Oct 09, 1998 Eastern By Linda Sieg TOKYO, Oct 9 (Reuters) - A lot can change in four months. Just last June, global markets worried that a steep slide in the yen would spark an Asian economic meltdown, with disastrous consequences for the rest of the world. Now, some say, disaster looms because the yen's dramatic rise threatens to deal a body blow to Japan's economy with nasty fallout for the rest of Asia and to exacerbate a global credit crunch which will damage growth in the United States and other until-now robust major economies. ''It's a disaster for the world if this continues, because it is going to see a contraction in the U.S. economy with a credit crunch on the way,'' Andrew Ballingal, chief strategist at Schroders Asia in Hong Kong. That, he added, ''is not going to be much fun for the U.S., but it's going to be a disaster for the emerging markets.'' The dollar has plunged 18 percent against the yen this week to a low of 111.45 yen on Thursday. That spells a more than 24 percent fall from its August 11 high of 147.64 yen. The greenback was trading at around 116.55 in mid-afternoon in Tokyo on Friday. Japan's finance mandarins have called for a strong yen for months, though given the myriad factors at work they can hardly be credited with engineering all or even most of its surge. On Friday, top financial diplomat Eisuke Sakakibara changed his tune slightly and said stability in currency markets was ''desirable'' but Finance Minister Kiichi Miyazawa said there was no need to intervene in the market to achieve that goal. Critics say Japan's strong-yen campaign perhaps made sense when it seemed a weak yen would push the rest of Asia off an economic precipice, but had gone too far given the potential damage to Japan's economy and the rest of the region. ''The strong yen is a disaster for Japan. And although at the moment it may provide blessed relief for Asian economies, how protracted can that be in an environment in which the Japanese economy is pushed into a deflationary spiral?'' said Russell Jones, chief economist at Lehman Brothers in Tokyo. A strong yen makes Japanese exports less competitive and erases one of the few bright spots in the recessionary economy. It also boosts deflationary pressures by cutting import prices. ''The only thing that's been holding up the economy for the past 18 months was the tradeable goods sector and we've just kicked the crutch out from under the economy,'' Jones said. Economic Planning Agency chief Taichi Sakaiya echoed those worries, telling a news conference that a prolonged yen rise would be deflationary for Japan. Analysts attributed the Finance Ministry's drive to boost the yen partly to a desire to help ailing banks by boosting weak capital-asset ratios, as well as to help the rest of Asia. Some also said the Finance Ministry had also taken aim at so-called hedge funds, seen as dangerous speculators partly behind Asia's financial crisis. ''This was Japan's real blow against speculative capital worldwide,'' Ballingal said. Hedge funds, which are aggressively managed investment funds, aim to maximise returns from short-term movements and leverage obtained from derivatives. But the yen's stunning rise, analysts said, killed the hedge funds ''yen carry trade,'' added to their huge losses, and worsened an emerging global credit crunch. ''Yen carry trade'' is a strategy in which fund operators borrow low-cost yen funds and convert them into dollars through currency and interest rate swaps. ''The close-out of yen carry trade certainly restricts capital going into emerging markets and some emerged markets, like the United States,'' Kenneth Landon, currency strategist at Deutsche Bank in Tokyo, told Reuters Television. ''It will restrict capital from going where it needs to go.'' Despite the worries, the United States looks unlikely to move soon to halt the trend, given the boost to exports from a weaker dollar at a time when its economic outlook has worsened. That, of course, was what most said last June just before Washington shocked markets by joining with Tokyo in June to sell dollars for yen to stop the Japanese currency's slide. U.S. President Bill Clinton said on Thursday that the yen's rise ''could be a good thing,'' though Treasury chief Robert Rubin then said through a spokesman that Washington's dollar policy remains unchanged. Deutsche Bank's Landon said Clinton had let the cat out of the bag on Washington's true intentions to countenance further dollar declines. ''The U.S. Treasury has changed its policy,'' he said. ''President Clinton let out the real thinking. I think the big picture is that we're going down.'' ((Tokyo newsroom +81-3 3432-8617 tokyo.newsroom+reuters.com)) Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited