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Strategies & Market Trends : Asia Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (7454)	11/10/1998 11:24:00 AM
From: DMaA	Respond to of 9980

they claimed that the people buying these bonds at a premium were betting that the yen would appreciate! That was one reason. The other was that people were anticipating bank failures. Don't believe the article stated which was the predominant reason.

To: Sam who wrote (7454)	11/10/1998 11:31:00 AM
From: Ramsey Su	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9980

Sam, actually, if I understand it correctly, the rate never went negative. The price of the bonds implied the rates were negative. Needless to say, if the free market is at work at, the only sane reason to buy these bonds is because the buyer thinks the yen will go up in value. We all know that there is no free market in the world for quite some time now, especially in Asia. If it is BoJ buying these bonds, what games are they playing and toward what objective? It is becoming more apparent that the Japanese cronism based society is far more deep rooted than previously known (at least to me). Unlike countries such as China on one end and Indonesia on the other, the good old boys are still in power with no corruption-buster like Zhu Rongji powerful enough to address the issues. Japan itself is strong enough that an Indonesian style collapse to kick out the Japanese Suhartos is not imminent. What I thought were some good public policies in Japan now appears to be bailing out cronies in disguise. Just my 2 cents. Ramsey