Yen Drops Even as BoJ Leaves Policy Unchanged

  March 07th, 2013 at 11:50

Rolled 1,000-yen banknoteThe Bank of Japan left its interest rates and the size of the asset purchase program unchanged today. The Japanese yen dropped after the news.

The BoJ left interest rates near zero during today’s meeting, which was the last with Masaaki Shirakawa as an acting leader. One member of the board suggested an introduction of an open-ended asset-purchase program, but others voted against this proposal. Market participants viewed such suggestion as laying down the ground work for more aggressive monetary easing by the new central bank’s head Haruhiko Kuroda.

USD/JPY fell from 94.06 to 93.78, but rebounded to 94.17 as of 11:50 GMT today. EUR/JPY went up from 121.95 to 122.55.