A cheap currency helps finance the US tech boom. Washington is intervening because allies matter only when they are useful<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s yen has slid back towards 160 to the dollar, despite last month\u2019s extraordinary<\/a> US-Japanese intervention. Traders are betting that its role as a cheap\u00a0funding pipeline for global finance will continue.\u00a0Earlier this month the Trump administration\u00a0stepped in to help Tokyo stabilise its currency. \u201cJapan\u2019s been very good to us, with the exception, of course, of Pearl Harbor,\u201d Donald Trump explained<\/a>. More help is likely to be on its way.<\/p>\n But this is less a rescue of the yen than an attempt by Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, to preserve a cash spigot that benefits the US. Japan\u2019s ultra-cheap money has become a global funding utility: bankers borrow yen, sell them for dollars and buy higher-returning US assets, notably tech shares. Rising American stock markets support collateral and\u00a0investment. Japan\u2019s \u201ccarry trade\u201d is one of the reasons Wall Street can lever hundreds of billions into AI. Research suggests<\/a> AI sucks up more than 1% of US GDP.<\/p>\n Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A cheap currency helps finance the US tech boom. Washington is intervening because allies matter only when they are useful Japan\u2019s yen has slid back towards 160 to the dollar, despite last month\u2019s extraordinary US-Japanese intervention. Traders are betting that its role as a cheap\u00a0funding pipeline for global finance will continue.\u00a0Earlier this month the Trump … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77320\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}