(OT) Happy Birthday To Me, Happy Birthday To Me

Happy Birthday to Meee-eeeee

Happy Birthday to Meeeeeeeee

(Taking the day off. Maybe.)

For your Sunday amusement, from Bloomberg News (2/17/2013), a joke called G20 says as long as Japan doesn't publicly say it wants a cheaper yen, everything will be fine and dandy. The US and the UK cannot say much anyway, with their central banks printing like there is no tomorrow:

G-20 Signals Support for Japan Stimulus Without Yen Talk

Global finance chiefs signaled Japan has scope to keep stimulating its stagnant economy as long as policy makers cease publicly advocating a sliding yen.

The message was delivered at weekend talks of finance ministers and central bankers from the Group of 20 in Moscow. While they pledged not “to target our exchange rates for competitive purposes,” Japan wasn’t singled out for allowing the yen to drop and won backing for its push to beat deflation.

“There was no censure of the Japanese attitude, which was considered a policy to develop its economy and not to intentionally devalue,” Brazilian Finance Minister Guido Mantega told reporters after the meeting. South Korean Finance Minister Bahk Jae-Wan said “comments suggesting specific levels of foreign-exchange rates should be dealt with caution.”

The G-20’s harder line on exchange rates was adopted after the yen’s 7 percent slide against the dollar this year raised concern Japan is starting a currency war, in which countries seek to protect exports through devaluation. The agreement, hashed out at all-night talks beside the Kremlin, now leaves Japan free to try to revive its economy while putting pressure on officials to avoid explicitly targeting a cheaper yen.

That probably means the Japanese currency will continue depreciating in the near term below the 93.50 per dollar it reached at the end of last week, said Jan Dehn, London-based co- head of research at Ashmore Investment Management Ltd., which manages $71 billion.
‘Can Continue’

The G-20 is “saying there isn’t exchange rate manipulation by Japan and everything they’re doing is interpreted to be aimed at getting domestic growth going,” he said Feb. 16 by phone. “The yen can continue to weaken.”

The yen has fallen as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe campaigned for looser monetary policy to revive an economy plagued by 15 years of deflation and three recessions in the past five years. Gross domestic product shrank an annualized 0.4 percent in the last quarter, the Cabinet Office in Tokyo said on Feb. 14.

Since Abe won elections in December, the Bank of Japan has agreed to a 2 percent inflation target and to make open-ended asset purchases from 2014. The prime minister has to announce his nominees for a new central bank governor and deputies by March 9, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroshige Seko said on public broadcaster NHK yesterday.

(Full farce at the link)

And who will be the most likely candidate for the Bank of Japan governorship? A career bureaucrat from the Finance Ministry. Some central bank independence.

Tweet