The man once known as "Mr. Yen" was at it again last month. Japan's former vice finance minister, Eisuke Sakakibara, was offering his two cents worth on the yen's slide against the dollar.
If the government's reforms fail to make progress, he said, it's "not unlikely that the yen will reach 150 to 160 [per dollar] by the end of the year." Moments later, the yen plunged as his views spread through the currency market.
Rather than trading off Sakakibara's comments, markets might've asked a question: Who cares? Almost three years after he left office, can he really offer more insight on the yen's outlook than analysts at, say, Daiwa Bank Holdings Inc or Goldman, Sachs & Co? Probably not.
Call it LDS -- Limelight Deprivation Syndrome -- but somehow Sakakibara and assorted other has-beens continue to extend their 15 minutes of fame long after they had anything meaningful to say.
"The media's need for the economic equivalent of a rent-a-cop gives these people life after government," says Simon Ogus, chief executive at DSG Asia Ltd in Hong Kong.
Sakakibara used to be a bigwig at the Finance Ministry during his July 1997-July 1999 stint as its currency czar. His tenure was riddled with market-moving comments about the yen's value. He seemed to raise verbal intervention in currency markets to an art form -- hence the nickname.
The attention that is still drawn his way ignores a couple of things.
First, the years he spent in government weren't Japan's finest hour from an economic standpoint -- banking crises, extreme volatility in markets and a bond-issuing binge that will be paid for by future generations. Second, are we really to believe Sakakibara has inside knowledge about Tokyo's yen policies? Even current officials don't seem to know what they are.
The trend isn't limited to Japan
The attention paid to the Who's Was of global economics is hardly unique to Japan. One can find it pretty much anywhere.
In the US, for example, reporters and currency traders still get excited when C. Fred Bergsten steps to the microphone. He heads the Institute for International Economics, a Washington think tank.
Before that, he was President Jimmy Carter's assistant US Treasury secretary for international affairs.
Never mind that Bergsten hasn't held a full-time Treasury job in more than 20 years. Or that the Carter Administration didn't exactly distinguish itself in the area of economic policy. Many folks still think Bergsten, whose office is a 10-minute walk from the Treasury, is in the know about US dollar policy.
In Europe, market participants growl about seeing has-beens such as Oskar Lafontaine basking in the limelight now and again.
Lafontaine is the former German finance minister whose resignation in March 1999 sent stocks and the euro higher. Investors cheered the exit of a combative figure whose constant attacks on the European Central Bank roiled markets.
Former German Finance Minister Theo Waigel also pops into the news a bit more often than many Europeans would like. Ditto for former French finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn and former UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont.
The US, though, seems to be a particularly lucrative -- and accepting -- market for those who don't realize they've passed their use-by date.
A highly unscientific poll of economists, investors and fellow reporters points to a variety of former officials who seem wildly over-exposed relative to the amount of insight they provide.
RSS