Business life: My finance news blog

The Group of Seven warned the surging yen posed a threat to financial and economic stability on Monday in the latest coordinated effort by the world’s richest nations to contain worst financial crisis in 80 years.

The yen was the only currency mentioned in a brief G7 statement issued as it rallied to 13-year high against the dollar, threatening Japanese exports as world’s second-largest economy tumbles toward recession.

With Tokyo’s Nikkei share average hitting a 26-year low and share of Japan’s biggest banks tumbling on fears that they would have replenish capital, Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa said the G7 was worried about volatility in the yen.

“We continue to monitor markets closely and cooperate as appropriate,” Nakagawa said, reading from the G7 statement.

South Korea resorted to a record interest rate cut and Australia’s central bank said it had intervened to support its currency in another sign that policymakers are reaching beyond troubled banks now that the financial crisis has shattered investor confidence, and threatens jobs and corporate sales.

Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso asked ministers to consider emergency measures to stabilize the stock market, including government purchases of shares and relaxing rules on recapitalization of banks. Three banks were looking to raise cash to offset stock market losses, Japanese media reported.

The Nikkei clawed 0.7 percent higher but Asia-Pacific shares outside of Japan fell 2.6 percent to a four-year low, according to an MSCI index. Safer assets such as government bonds and gold traded higher on the day, suggesting investors would need to see more than just rhetoric before acting.

“Whether what we’re seeing right now from policymakers is sufficient is difficult to tell faxless pay advances. The price action alone in markets tells me not,” said Dwyfor Evans, currency strategist with State Street Global Markets in Hong Kong.

Developing nations have been turning to the International Monetary Fund for help to stave off the worst global financial crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Hungary had reached an agreement to get a “substantial financing package” in the next few days that will include financing by the European Union and some individual European governments, the IMF said.

The IMF agreed on a $16.5 billion loan package for Ukraine on Sunday.

STERNEST TEST

South Korean policymakers took their most dramatic measures yet in a months long battle to buttress confidence in an economy facing its sternest test since the Asian financial crisis a decade ago.

The Bank of Korea cut its main interest rate by 75 basis points to 4.25 percent in an unscheduled meeting. The rate cut was the biggest on record and only the second emergency move since the bank adopted its current monetary policy system; the first was after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

“Their priority is to minimize the impact of the crisis on growth and on volatility. Eventually this could also help the markets,” said Sebastien Barbe, senior economist and foreign exchange strategist with Calyon in Hong Kong.

President Lee Myung-bak pledged to increase government spending and to cut taxes to support Asia’s fourth largest economy, which grew at the slowest quarterly pace in four years during the last quarter. 

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