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The story
The yen was sold on the New York foreign exchange market on the 4th, falling 48 sen from the previous day to 156.23-33 yen per dollar. On the 5ch News Flash+ thread, opinions clashed over this level, touching on speculation about a Bank of Japan rate hike and the effectiveness of currency intervention. Some voiced nostalgia for the days of 80 yen to the dollar, saying “that era was better,” while others accepted the weak yen, saying “around 160 yen is just right” — views on the appropriate level were split. Opinions on the Takaichi administration’s economic management were also divided, and the discussion went well beyond just the exchange rate figures.
September 4, 2026, 9:51 PM, Kyodo News
[NEW YORK, Kyodo] As of 8:40 a.m. on the 4th, the yen was trading at 156.23-33 to the dollar on the New York foreign exchange market, down 48 sen from the previous day.
Source: 47news.jp / Original article here
What people said
I want cheap beef bowls again
What determines a currency's value is the economic strength of the country that issues it.
And the source of a country's economic strength is the supply and demand generated within it.
Supply and demand aren't split between different people — both exist within a single person.
Workers work harder to buy better things, so demand and supply both increase, and the economy grows.
People living off social welfare don't see their income rise from working,
so they try to raise their disposable income by buying things cheaper, which only pushes things toward reducing added value.
Social welfare may be socially just, but it's economically harmful.
What Japan needs is to convert the people dependent on welfare into workers.
To do that, the only option is to make people who are healthy enough to work but don't, actually work.
Specifically, what needs to happen is cutting pensions and welfare payments for people under 80.
Those days were good — gas was like 85 yen (a liter)
Yen-strong deflation will eventually cause a catastrophic collapse
Unable to withstand soaring import prices, the yen's value can't be sustained either, leading to extreme yen weakness
The combined effect sends prices up 3x, 4x all at once
And the result is everything gets shifted to production in China, and even with a record current account surplus,
real yen-buying demand vanishes, so it's weak-yen anyway lol
The only ones hoping for a return to the days when Japanese companies were in terrible shape are the Chinese Communist Party
They'll raise it because the US is chewing them out
Just let currency intervention cover it, please
I really don't get what the US is going for here
Financial institutions worldwide are totally hooked on the low-interest yen
If a rate hike triggers an unwinding of that, what happens to the markets?
Do they even actually want a rate hike?
I get the feeling Japan can't survive in a world with real interest rates — 3% would be brutal
The zero-savings crowd around here is saying 5% lol
The zombie companies will go under
I mean, I think the zombies themselves will get wiped out first lol
Yen strength + falling Japanese labor costs + falling prices in the countries we import from
Unless all three happen together, prices won't go back to those levels
So basically you're saying hand over all of Japan's jobs to overseas.
https://www.jiji.com/sp/article?k=2026090200517&g=int
I wonder who those "some economic advisors" are? 🙄
Whoa… he's actually furious…
That's a misreport
I mean, that'd be the kind of thing you could face criminal charges for as market manipulation
Seems like the downsides of the rate hikes are just starting to show up in the numbers
Raising rates obviously hurts the economy, but the plan was that fiscal spending would offset it enough to hold things together
Looks like the stimulus spending just isn't enough
Russia's rate is 15% and they're doing just fine lol
They're not fine at all
they're just dancing their last dance right before keeling over
A bit late to bring this up, but
it's just text on a screen, but I really wonder what kind of person actually writes like this
like, seeing this country and people like this, makes you wonder if it's really going to be okay
>On the Tokyo foreign exchange market on Monday the 2nd, the yen briefly weakened to around 155 yen per dollar, about 1.70 yen weaker than the previous Friday's 5pm level. The sell-off has been driven by the view that PM Takaichi's remarks signaled acceptance of a weaker yen.
>On January 31, in a campaign speech for the lower house election, PM Takaichi remarked on the Foreign Exchange Fund Special Account, which manages the funds used for currency intervention, saying, "The weak yen is helping us out — the fund's returns are looking great right now." The market widely took this as a sign she's fine with a weak yen.
https://www.yomiuri.co.jp/economy/20260202-GYT1T00093/
Are we ever getting back to the level before that "looking great" weak-yen remark? 😭
Let's call 155 yen the "looking-great bedrock"
It'll never break until the day the earth is destroyed
It'll be rough unless they raise rates maybe twice more this year
Meaning unless they get it up to at least half the US rate, this weak-yen "looking great" hell continues
On top of the weak-yen hell we're already in, the bill's coming due for oil bought in May and July at over $100 a barrel — Japanese people's lives are going to get wrecked
Too many idiots forgetting that half of GDP is personal consumption
If we end up in a recession, none of it will have been worth it
Isn't around 160 yen just right?
Companies profit
and domestic consumption gets a boost too
Yen stability should be welcomed, but yen strength shouldn't be.
Ideally somewhere around 160-180, keeping it in check so it doesn't fall through the floor
Let's get people spending down their dead-money savings
if anything, the economy dies unless the yen strengthens
Tax revenue is beating expectations thanks to the high prices lolol
Well, the government and Ministry of Finance want to shrink the national debt by driving up prices, so they're probably welcoming the high prices
Plus, the budget is a source of power after all
Spending is overshooting even more than that…
Background and Key Points of This Discussion
Currency intervention — the Ministry of Finance and Bank of Japan selling dollars to buy yen (or vice versa) from their holdings — is a tool for temporarily moving the exchange rate, but it’s said to lose effectiveness quickly unless structural factors like the Japan-US interest rate gap actually change. The thread’s main split was over whether the Bank of Japan should rush to raise rates: a hike would curb yen weakness, but some worried about side effects like rising mortgage rates and the culling of “zombie companies.” Another point of contention was the yen’s appropriate level, with some accepting that “around 160 yen keeps both companies and domestic consumption stable,” while others countered that “with high prices already crushing consumption, the economy can’t hold up unless the yen strengthens.” Views on the Takaichi administration’s economic management were split too, though it’s worth noting this isn’t a conclusion that follows directly from the 156-yen figure itself — it’s mixed in with speculation and secondhand information colored by each poster’s own position.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Flash+) thread “[Breaking] NY Yen at 156.23-33.”
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