Whoa! Japan and China bypassing US dollars - do direct currency trades

Blogman's comments: First it was Russia and China, now Japan and China! The next two largest economies in the world after the US have agreed to conduct trade in their own currencies. It seems that outside of the Wall Street BANK-O-RATS that make enormous profits from the US dollar trade, most of the world has come to the realization that it is not in their interest to hold US dollars and are now openly beginning to dump the greenback, which in fact is backed by NOTHING. And that is the problem! At any given moment the Dollar can go into a death slide and the trillions held by China and other nations will buy NOTHING. Since they are far too entangled in the Dollar snare to cut themselves loose suddenly, they are doing it slowly but even so the disentanglement is gathering pace. Watch for the sudden and catastrophic devaluation of the US dollar plunging the whole world into Deep DEPRESSION and plunging the developed world into 3rd world status overnight. Actually it will be worse than 3rd world status because unlike the 3rd world denizens that are used to surviving on next to nothing, developed world citizens are far too much in love with their Big Macs and fries, and their iPods and Starbucks lattes to withdraw from such a lifestyle without  going through severs withdrawals, fatal in many cases! 

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China, Japan to Back Direct Trade of Currencies  

Japan and China will promote direct trading of the yen and yuan without using dollars and will encourage the development of a market for companies involved in the exchanges, the Japanese government said.

Japan will also apply to buy Chinese bonds next year, allowing the investment of renminbi that leaves China during the transactions, the Japanese government said in a statement after a meeting between Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing yesterday. Encouraging direct yen- yuan settlement should reduce currency risks and trading costs, the Japanese and Chinese governments said.

China is Japan’s biggest trading partner with 26.5 trillion yen ($340 billion) in two-way transactions last year, from 9.2 trillion yen a decade earlier. The pacts between the world’s second- and third-largest economies mirror attempts by fund managers to diversify as the two-year-old European debt crisis keeps global financial markets volatile.

“Given the huge size of the trade volume between Asia’s two biggest economies, this agreement is much more significant than any other pacts China has signed with other nations,” said Ren Xianfang, a Beijing-based economist with IHS Global Insight Ltd.

Currency Swap

China also announced a 70 billion yuan ($11 billion) currency swap agreement with Thailand last week as part of a plan outlined in October to promote the use of the yuan in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and establish free trade zones.

Central banks from Thailand to Nigeria plan to start buying yuan assets as slowing global growth has capped interest rates in the U.S. and Europe.

The move by China and Japan to strengthen market cooperation “benefits the ease of trade and investments between the two countries,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said today in Beijing. “It strengthens the region’s ability to protect against risks and deal with challenges.”

The yuan traded in Hong Kong’s offshore market gained 0.5 percent offshore last week and touched 6.3324 per dollar, the strongest level since trading started in July 2010. Its discountto the exchange rate in Shanghai narrowed to 0.1 percent, from a record 1.9 percent on Sept. 23.

Yuan Gains

The yuan gained 0.05 percent in Shanghai to 6.3330 per dollar today and was little changed at 6.3450 in Hong Kong. It strengthened 4.3 percent this year, the best-performing Asian currency excluding the yen. The currency is allowed to trade 0.5 percent on either side of that rate. The yuan is a denomination of the renminbi.

Japan exported 10.8 trillion yen to China in the year through November, and imported 12 trillion yen, according to Ministry of Finance data. The deficit with China widened to 1.2 trillion yen, from 418 billion yen in January-to-November 2010. About 60 percent of the trade transactions are settled in dollars, according to Japan’s Finance Ministry.

Finance Minister Jun Azumi said Dec. 20 buying of Chinese bonds would help reveal more information about financial markets in China. Noda said in September 2010, when he was finance minister, that Japan should be able to invest in China given that its neighbor buys Japanese debt. Japan holds $1.3 trillion of foreign-currency reserves, the world’s second largest after China’s $3.2 trillion.

Chinese Debt

Investing in Chinese debt has become easier for central banks as issuance of yuan-denominated bonds in Hong Kong more than tripled to 112 billion yuan ($18 billion) this year and institutions were granted quotas to invest onshore. Japan will start to buy “a small amount” of China’s bonds, a Japanese government official said on condition of anonymity because of the ministry’s policy, without elaborating.

China sold the second-biggest net amount of Japanese debt on record in October as the yen headed for a postwar high against the dollar and benchmark yields approached their lowest levels in a year. It cut Japanese debt by 853 billion yen, Japan’s Ministry of Finance said on Dec. 8.

Separately, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation, JGC Corp., Mizuho Corporate Bank Ltd., the Export-Import Bank of China and other Chinese companies will establish a $154 million fund to invest in environment-related businesses such as recycling and energy, the Japanese government said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Toru Fujioka in Tokyo at tfujioka1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Paul Panckhurst atppanckhurst@bloomberg.net