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
I guess it still is - it just went from 1 USD to 1 AUD to now 1 NZD :-D
And as you said, "it was an easy 15 bucks". You were very aware of what you were doing: easy money off your "friend", instead of friends not minding a few dollars missing here or there.
/s
Between electronic transfer and just settle the debt later, isn’t really an excuse…
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).
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.
If you raise JPY rates, then these U.S. treasuries are going to get liquidated driving up U.S. rates and of course the U.S. doesn't like that.
So, I believe the US is pressuring Japan NOT to raise rates, i.e. to save the U.S.'s own currency.
This is undoubtedly why Bessent bought $5 to $10 billion JPY using Euro awhile back (as rumored, the exact amount is a secret). That way he could try and bailout Japan and by using Euro instead of USD, not affect US inflation so much. He also did it without telling anyone in Europe which quite pissed them off as well.
It's really funny seeing these shenanigans take place with all the pompousness the US shows regarding its currency and how it pretends it itself is not going broke.
> So, I believe the US is pressuring Japan NOT to raise rates, i.e. to save the U.S.'s own currency.
The US is pressuring the BoJ not to liquidate US debt to get the USD needed to buy Yen. It only tangentially relates to bond yields, and has nothing to do with defending the USD.
It would be better for the US if Japan just normalized rates, but Japanese politicians are resistant.
The US has the same problem. Maybe less extreme, but the balance sheet has tons of short-term debt, and rates aren’t cooperating.
> 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!
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.
Always seems to go wrong. Like spraying water on a forest fire with a straw.
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.
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.