Yen weakens past ¥160 per dollar, eroding intervention gains

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2026/08/29/markets/yen-160-dollar-intervention/

42•rguiscard•1h ago

Comments

shoobiedoo•58m ago

I live in Japan and five years ago my drinking buddy at the time only had USD and was about to get on the shinkansen. He needed Yen ASAP. So he said, "dude I'll trade you a 100USD for 10000YEN." At the time it was an easy fifteen bucks or something profit after exchange, so I said, sure, here ya go.

I put it in a drawer and forgot about it until a few weeks ago. I'm going to the moon with this, ladies and gentlemen

zaik•53m ago

Who charges their buddy 15 USD exchange fees on 100 USD? :(

rtpg•50m ago

That's the wrong read. It's more that it's easy to understand. "I will give you a 100 dollar bill, please give me a 10,000 yen bill."

oniony•37m ago

He must have been a very itchy man.

piker•22m ago

Does seem within the range of “hit me back when I see you next week, buddy” though.

shoobiedoo•47m ago

He literally put 100USD in front of me, said he forgot to get more yen before his trip, and asked for a favor. Am I really in the wrong from your perspective?

xattt•41m ago

Yes, the move to do was to take a pair of scissors to cut down the 100 dollar bill to fair market value, and give the remainder back to your friend.

itake•39m ago

If I was in that situation and I’d help my friend not try to make a buck off them when they are down.

Between electronic transfer and just settle the debt later, isn’t really an excuse…

shoobiedoo•33m ago

Please explain how the situation I described is me "trying to make a buck". You're saying he regretted the terms he presented, and is forever resentful that I didn't drag him to a bank to look up the exchange rate at the time?

Groxx•32m ago

It very much depends on the people and the relationship. Through many years, I've swung a few hundred$+ in either direction with a bunch of people, thousands with a couple.

I much prefer zero stress - if money is tight, we just don't do expensive stuff, or steal the bill before they have a chance to pay. Mostly that means we stay cheap until we can safely cover multiple people if needed (running your safety-buffer low enough that you can't do that is a terrible idea anyway).

N_Lens•37m ago

This is the kind of handwringing over $100 ethics I come to HN for!

shoobiedoo•30m ago

lmao. This place is turning into reddit

geysersam•37m ago

It might have been a gift by his friend. You don't know the details, maybe the friend is more affluent, maybe op had already let him stay in his apartment and given him food and this was the friends covert attempt to even the scale without directly offering money.

justsomehnguy•25m ago

You mean the cost of a couple of beers at the end of the day?

OP clearly stated the situation was of a mutual benefit - friend got their Y now and don't need to bother with doing an exchange, OP got a few spare bucks which was a such big sum what it literally sat in the drawer for 5 (five) years.

Groxx•25m ago

Diamond hands pays off at last, congrats on the windfall!

timr•49m ago

The BoJ has to raise rates. Dumping Dollars to buy Yen is spitting in the wind.

m00dy•37m ago

TGA account has around $1T in it. So, Bessent has enough ammo to defend the castle of Japan.

timr•36m ago

It’s pointless. Setting money on fire to avoid the inevitable.

Since Bessent did what he did the whole issue has been swallowed up in the idiotic partisan maw of US politics, but it’s just a self-defeating effort by Japan to fight the market.

charcircuit•33m ago

Do you mean BoJ? JCB is a credit card company. It's expected for the BoJ to raise the rate to 1.25% in 2 weeks.

timr•32m ago

Yes, my bad. I got in the bad habit of referring to it like the ECB.

> It's expected for the BoJ to raise the rate to 1.25% in 2 weeks.

Cool. Only like four hundred basis points to go!

tw1984•46m ago

In 1985, USDJPY was around 250:1, why 160:1 is now a problem?

With almost all of its industries no longer in a leading position, with its car industry being demolished by EVs, 250:1 is what it is heading.

himata4113•45m ago

USD is falling vs euro so EURJPY is even more bleak. USD in general during those times was way stronger than it is today so those numbers are meaningless.

weakened_malloc•30m ago

Because that was 1985, and this is now. Entire supply chains, input costs, planning, etc. have been built around the assumption of the JPY trading in some sort of range.

Of course that will change over time, if it hasn't already. The Japanese government's messaging about this has been that they're not really worried about the currency weakening (after all they're massive net exporters! it should be a good thing), but rather the speed at which it's happening.

afarah1•28m ago

Most large companies hedge their exposition to FX rates.

reactordev•13m ago

FX futures, but yes.

AnimalMuppet•19m ago

Because you cherry-picked 1985. It went below 160:1 in 1986 and hasn't been back since, until now. So it's the weakest it's been in literally 40 years; that's at least potentially a big deal.

chenzhekl•34m ago

Unless Japan raises interest rates or tightens fiscal spending, no amount of intervention will work as long as the structural problems remain.

2OEH8eoCRo0•29m ago

Time to sell some bonds!

charcircuit•27m ago

This headline is outdated. It's at 159.82 yen / usd right now.

Stevvo•18m ago

Fantastic as someone looking for an affordable vacation destination.

cco•16m ago

Defending currency has to have some quip, right? Something like, "The market can remain honest longer than your central bank can stay solvent"?

Always seems to go wrong. Like spraying water on a forest fire with a straw.

“I just chose words carefully”

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