So maybe around 2023, I had some finance friends tell me that the yen was going to hit 250-300 in five or six years. Crude explanation, but they basically said that Japan is doing what the US is doing with money printing, but even more extreme (all countries are doing this to stay alive, though). While it's true that a lot of Japan's debt is owed internally, they are a much weaker economy overall than the US so their inflation will hit much harder and faster.
250 yen against the dollar sounded comical at the time… but then yen hit 160 before pulling back to 145-ish. Now we're nearly at 160 again.
BOJ announced that they are printing over 100 billion dollars while keeping interest near zero… They say it's to "fight inflation" which is insane doublespeak because this will literally cause inflation to surge.
So really, I don't know how unrealistic it is for the yen to hit 250 in a few years. 200 within a year seems possible.
The question is, what do we do? Look, if you're an English teacher who lives paycheck to paycheck and you're only staying for a few years, this doesn't really matter. But to those of us who have lives here, assets and savings, this is getting a bit worrisome. I don't want to see everything I've worked so hard to save be chewed away by 40%
What should we do? Buy gold? Bitcoin is crashing hard. Real estate in Tokyo seems to be holding up, but only because all the Japanese are flooding into Tokyo because it's the only place you can get a good job and have a future, + tons of foreigners investing so the prices seem to be moving up. But how long can that last?
Thoughts?
by RedMoonLanding