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The story
A thread titled “Is a weak yen actually in Japan’s national interest?” on 5ch’s “Nandemo Jikkyo G” board sparked a heated debate over currency policy. Opinions clashed between those who see the weak yen as a symptom of declining national credibility and worry about eroding asset values, and those who point to the room it gives for low interest rates and the boost to exporters’ earnings. Some even proposed switching to a fixed exchange rate system. The discussion also spilled into tax policy, debating how the pace of tax hikes and the fiscal deficit relate to the weak yen — with no consensus emerging even among experts.
What people said
Japanese people don't want blue-collar jobs, so the weak yen barely helps anyone.
Why would anyone bother coming all the way here to work for a weak currency?
To bring in immigrants in the first place, you need to keep the yen's value up.
There's no way elite foreigners — the kind who can learn Japanese and handle Japan's advanced jobs (even convenience store shifts here count as advanced by global standards) — are coming to earn some garbage currency.
Nobody actually knows where that sweet spot is.
Then couldn't we just fix the exchange rate at that ideal number?
Obviously a comfortable temperature is best, and obviously no sudden swings is best.
Going by that logic, couldn't you just peg the rate (temperature) at the comfortable level?
A "fixed" exchange rate only looks fixed — behind the scenes the government is constantly buying and selling currency to hold that level.
If Japan declared a fixed rate, it would just mean intervening endlessly to keep it at, say, 160 yen.
Not that different from now.
Maybe water temperature is the better analogy then?
Air temperature changes on its own, but water temperature has to be actively adjusted to suit the season.
Nice try, hater — this country's been declining for 30+ years, that's old news.
You talk like Japan's decline would just stop if the yen got stronger.
You've got the causality backwards.
The yen is weak because national credibility is declining.
If credibility rose, the yen would strengthen.
Tax cuts erode credibility, so they weaken the yen.
Tax hikes build credibility, so they strengthen it.
It stagnated during the strong-yen years.
Abenomics saw GDP drop 30%, so that logic doesn't hold up.
What do you even mean by "economic growth"?
Stock prices or something? lol
What matters is that the yen was stable during Japan's actual growth years. These days pretty much only Yoichi Takahashi (a well-known pro-Abenomics economist) claims a weak yen equals growth.
How would you feel if your car or your house dropped in value like that?
Exactly.
People holding assets right now lose out,
which is why they hate the weak yen.
That's just because other countries printed too much money and got forced into high interest rates.
Japan having room for low rates is actually an advantage.
Which is exactly why the only way to get a stronger yen is to raise taxes.
So why does the yen keep weakening even though taxes have kept going up…?
Because spending on the public is growing even faster —
the national budget keeps ballooning faster than the tax hikes can keep up.
The pace of tax hikes is nowhere near enough.
We're not running a fiscal surplus, so of course it gets worse every year.
Debt: 1,000 trillion yen.
Spending this year: 120 trillion yen.
Tax revenue after the hikes: 70 trillion yen.
Debt grew by 50 trillion yen.
Of course the yen weakens.
If you want a stronger yen, raise taxes more and actually pay down the debt.
Background and Key Points of This Debate
A weak or strong yen cuts through the economy via multiple channels — exporters’ earnings, prices, and the real value of held assets — so it doesn’t reduce neatly to a simple “good” or “bad.” The fixed exchange rate idea raised in the thread is also easy to misread: in practice it just means the government and the Bank of Japan buying and selling currency without limit to hold a target level, which is really an extension of the current floating-rate system rather than something fundamentally different. It’s also worth noting that “record-high” nominal GDP or corporate earnings figures partly reflect the boost from a weaker yen, so confusing them with real, inflation-adjusted figures can distort the picture. On the link between the fiscal deficit and the weak yen, some blame the slow pace of tax hikes while others point to ballooning government spending — and even experts remain divided.
※This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Nandemo Jikkyo G) thread “[In-Depth Debate] So, Is a Weak Yen Actually in Japan’s National Interest? Even Experts Are Divided.”
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