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Message: <blockquote data-quote="thomas" data-source="post: 197" data-attributes="member: 1">NEWS: Japan to do everything possible to offset terrorist impactReported by <a href="http://sg.news.yahoo.com/">Yahoo News Singapore</a>:Japan to do everything possible to offset terrorist impactJapan pledged to do everything possible to restore calm in the already fragile economy as share prices crashed and the yen rose sharply following horrific terrorist attacks in the United States.Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi said Tokyo would "take appropriate measures so that confusion would not emerge in the global and Japanese economic systems."Japan's Nikkei 225 index sank below 10,000 points for the first time in 17 years Wednesday and the dollar fell nearly three yen against the Japanese currency after the attacks.Japan's Finance Minister Masajuro Shiokawa said the government was ready to step into the foreign exchange market to stem the yen's excessive rise against the dollar."If an unquiet situation continues, we need to intervene," he told a news conference.The minister spoke by telephone to US Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill about the situation and said the two countries had agreed to monitor market movements and take appropriate action when necessary."I talked about preventing the markets from becoming unstable through cooperation between Japan and the United States."Ruling Liberal Democratic Party policy board chief Taro Aso said "currency rates are more problematic" than stock prices in terms of damaging the economy, Jiji Press news agency reported.A surging yen could hamper Japanese exports as the higher value of the currency makes Japanese products more expensive abroad while reducing export income in yen terms.The dollar fell below 119 yen, trading at 118.86 yen at 3:15 pm (0615 GMT) against 119.21 yen in New York and 121.71-73 yen in Tokyo late Tuesday.Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda appealed for calm in financial markets."We will keep close contact with overseas markets authorities to cope with the situation... We would like to urge market participants to take a calm stance," he said.The key Nikkei-225 index on the Tokyo Stock Exchange fell 6.6 percent to crash through the 10,000 point level Wednesday as investors fled the equity market on terrorist fears.It plunged 682.85 points to end at 9,610.10, falling below the psychologically-important 10,000 mark for the first time in over 17 years. To reduce volatility following the terrorist strike, the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) halved the limit on price movements of individual stocks and started at 9:30 am (0030 GMT) -- half-an-hour later than usual."Given the unstable situation in the market, we also urge (investors) to refrain from taking any action that may undermine credibility in the market, such as spreading rumors," said TSE President Masaaki Tsuchida in a statement.Earlier in the morning Japan's central bank announced it had raised liquidity levels in the financial system by around two trillion yen (16.67 billion dollars).As a result, the outstanding balance of current account reserves at the central bank increased to 8.3 trillion yen, far above the targeted level of six trillion yen under the bank's present policy directive.Copyright ﾂｩ Yahoo News Singapore</blockquote>

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