On Oct. 20, currency traders saw something that hadn’t happened since June 1990—the Japanese yen to U.S. dollar exchange rate eclipsed 150 to 1.
The yen has seen shocking depreciation over the past year. In January 2021, the rate was 103 to 1, which has been roughly the average exchange rate for the last 30 years. In September 2021, the rate hovered around 110 to 1, and it didn’t surpass 120 until the end of March 2022. But since then, the exchange rate has skyrocketed, only settling back down slightly to 140 to 1, which is about where it sits as of late November. It’s a new status quo for the yen after 30 years of consistency, and economists on both sides of the Pacific say it’s not going back to the old norm any time soon.
“The yen-dollar exchange rate is important to Japan because Japan relies on imports for energy and food,” said Takuya Hoshino, an economics researcher at Dai-ichi Life. “The depreciation…
