Warum negative Zinsen in Japan? (ex NYT)

verfasst von dottore, 04.03.2003, 10:59

-->Hi,

dazu diese Erklärung:



In Japan, why pay interest? For some,
bank
pays borrower
Ken Belson The New York Times
Thursday, February 6, 2003

TOKYO People often think of zero
interest rates the way
physicists do the speed of light, as
an absolute limit.

After all, who would agree to lend
money at a negative interest
rate, and be certain of a loss, when
the cash could simply be left in
a safe, unchanged?

But head-scratching things have been
known to happen in Japan,
where political immobility in the face
of deflation and economic
stagnation has obliged the central
bank to keep interest rates very
close to zero for years. Now, the
once-rare phenomenon of loans
at negative interest, first seen here
in the late 1990s, is back. On
closer inspection, these odd deals do
have a financial logic, given
Japan's peculiar economic malaise.
Still, their reappearance
highlights the persistent weakness of
Japanese commercial banks.
The Bank of Japan used what some
economists called the last
arrow in its quiver when it cut its
benchmark short-term rate
effectively to zero in 1999.

The central bank hoped to stimulate
borrowing, investment and
growth, but the easy-money policy has
largely failed to do so.
Instead, it has all but wiped out
trading in Japanese money
markets. When short-term rates were
above zero, investors could
profit by trading bonds and other debt
securities of varying yields,
and financial institutions regularly
parked money in the market
overnight. But such money earns only
0.001 percent a year these
days, too little even to cover the
cost of trades.

Yet the banks still must transact
business. So under certain
circumstances, they are finding
themselves having to pay
borrowers to borrow from them, a
practice that analysts say will
continue until faith in the banking
system improves. With inflation
nowhere in sight and the banks
struggling with mounds of bad
debt, that time may still be years
away. Though most banks will
not confirm details of their trades,
traders say the most common
example is a Japanese bank that needs
dollars - say, to finance an
import or export transaction for a
client. The usual method is to
swap yen for dollars with a foreign
bank and then agree to reverse
the trade at a future date. These
forward contracts, as they are
called, expose the two banks to the
risk that exchange rates will
move adversely, but each bank can put
the money to other uses in
the meantime.

Foreign banks that provided dollars
this way would often put the
yen they received into the money
market or buy Japanese bonds
with it. Yields were not high, but
that was acceptable as long as
the overall swap deal was profitable
and the yen were invested
safely.

Safety became an issue, though, when
global credit agencies
began downgrading Japanese banks. To
compensate for greater
risk, foreign banks began demanding
more attractive terms on the
yen half of the swap transaction.

"The Japan premium is starting to
return," said Masaharu Usuki, an
economist at the NLI Research
Institute, referring to the banks'
higher cost of funds."This is really
a reflection of their weakened
state."

As a result, to get dollars now,
Japanese banks reportedly have to
pay foreign banks 0.08 percent to take
their yen.

"It's counterintuitive to pay someone
to hold your money for you,"
said Michael Wilkins, a market
strategist at Societe Generale
Securities North Pacific. But interest
rates were already at 1 basis
point, or one-hundredth of a
percentage point, he said,"so it only
took a bump to get there." The overall
swap deal could still be
profitable if the dollars earned more
for the bank than the yen loan
cost it, Wilkins noted.

"Minus interest rates," he said,"are
now part of the vocabulary."

Dem ist nichts hinzu zu fügen.

Gruß!

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• Warum negative Zinsen in Japan? (ex NYT) - dottore, 04.03.2003, 10:59