Another month brings another euro zone crisis and another resurgence in the value of the yen, which has strengthened beyond ¥79 to the dollar for the first time since February.
每当欧洲的主权债务危机转向2011年10月，当欧洲的主权债务危机转向令人担忧的情况下，欧洲的主权债务危机，日本货币被投资者作为一个安全的避风港。
Recent research from HSBC shows that the yen has a strong tendency to rise at times of diminished appetite for risk-on investments, while currencies that are seen as proxies for global growth, such as the Australian dollar, fall with a roughly equal reliability.
然而，最近几个月，根据日本最大的证券房屋的分析，美元一直失去与风险策略的强大2007年危险战略相关性。这增加了日元的光泽 - 周三在周三近乎左右的¥30.3的加强，周五的近低于¥79.0，因为对希腊和西班牙的恐惧增长了。Nomura分析师在最近的说明中授予日元令人垂涎的绰号“仍然最安全的货币”。在周一亚洲交易结束时，日元兑美元¥79.2。
本周安全货币的吸引力可能变得更加强大，如果担心希腊将成为第一个离开欧元区的成员国。由货币联盟的动荡政治刺激，日元变得多大？
Capital Economics, the independent macroeconomic consultancy, is bearish about Euroland, and its bullishness about the yen is a logical extension. “Our view for some time has been that the euro zone would experience some form of breakup this year, which will push the yen to ¥70 against the dollar by the end of 2012,” says David Rea, Japan economist at Capital Economics.
短缺欧元区危机的解决方案，有什么可能纠结这种上升吗？
日本银行的直接干预可能设定天花板。在货币达到历史新高之后，该银行通过大量销售销售日元的升值，终止了日元的升值。
Once again, ¥75 is likely to prove the most likely trigger for intervention, although the Japanese government will think carefully before acting. Intervention uses up political goodwill with the U.S. government, which is anxious about anything that keeps the dollar strong by making other currencies weaker. Many Japanese exporters have based business plans on the assumption that the yen might be about this level — a value that makes it harder for them to sell goods made more expensive by the strengthening currency. But few have made plans for an appreciation of the yen above this.
日本央行的另一种可能性是进一步的大量宽松（QE），旨在满足其新的通胀目标，在情人节中举办1％。但在2月份QE最初激增之后，该银行已经显示出更柔和的胃口，用于将现金抽入银行系统，这使得日元将反弹回来。
Yet speculating on the Japanese currency is not a one-way bet.
日元力量的历史基石之一是日本强劲的贸易顺差，这仍然对货币的需求很高。然而，去年，该国自1980年以来录得其第一项贸易逆差 - 主要是因为在地震和海啸之后关闭了核电站后的能源进口量，也因为由于对各国之间的日本商品的需求不需要而导致的国家在经济问题中。既未消失。
Another potential weak point for the yen is Japan’s poor underlying economic outlook. Growth in gross domestic product (GDP) has averaged about 1 percent over the past two decades and remains depressed by the continuing decline in the country’s working-age population. The annualized 4.1 percent rise in GDP for the first quarter, published on Thursday, is caused partly by the temporary boost to public investment in infrastructure damaged by the earthquake and tsunami. It will not be sustained.
日本’s low growth rate is one of the underlying factors behind another problem that could, in the long term, hit the yen: its extremely high debt. Investors have fled the euro since the beginning of May because of renewed fears that unsustainably high debt burdens would cause a collapse in the currency’s value. Instead, they have sought safety in the yen, where economists also fear the country’s debt burden is unsustainably high. Japan’s government debt is projected by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to climb from 230 percent to 236 percent of GDP this year, and to rise above 250 percent in 2016. In the euro zone, even the debt of Greece, the sick man of Europe, is estimated in the IMF’s April Fiscal Monitor report at 153 percent this year.
High debt creates many risks for currencies, including the fear that the central bank will respond to a government’s inability to service it by printing huge amounts of money to buy up the debt for itself — perhaps under the guise of QE. Another risk is that the central bank will create inflation in order to depreciate the size of the debt in real terms. Either policy would severely damage the yen’s value — as would the mere suspicion that it might happen in the future.
日本的债务负担没有高t yet caused a collapse of confidence in Japan’s economy and currency because domestic investors, who hold about 95 percent of the bonds, are willing to accept paltry rates of interest for holding it — preventing the fiscal deficit from running away beyond 10 percent of GDP. At the end of Monday Asian trading, the year on the Japanese 10-year was 0.86 percent. However, as debt increases yet further, they may prove unwilling to tolerate such low rates. At that point the yen might tumble very quickly. Economists have been warning for at least ten years that Japan’s debt mountain was not sustainable, but their predictions have not yet come true. As the altitude of the mountain continues to increase, at what point will they be right?