Weekend Box: Yen tumbles, Oscars & more
Editor's Note
Welcome to The Weekend Box, Audley’s weekly round-up of interesting or obscure political, business, and cultural news from around the world.
The Weekend Box remains committed in its support of Ukraine and to providing coverage on events from the conflict. Alongside this, the Box will continue to feature unique news stories that you may have missed from the week.
At the end of every busy week in Westminster, ministerial private offices ask their departments to submit papers to the ‘weekend box’ for Ministers and Secretaries of State to catch up with over the weekend. Similarly, we would like to send you into the weekend with a few stories to catch up with at your leisure.
So, let’s delve inside the Weekend Box.
THE YEN TAKES A TUMBLE
Monday was the icing on the cake for what has been a terrible March for the Yen. The currency hit a seven-year low, plummeting to 2.5% against the dollar to reach ¥125. Yen’s losses in March surpassed 7%, making it the most substantial monthly and quarterly fall since 2016.
The yen’s drop accelerated on Monday when the Bank of Japan’s (BoJ) announced that it would buy an unlimited quantity of 10-year Japanese government bonds to stop the yield on the benchmark debt from skyrocketing above the central bank’s 0.25% target. The emergency bond-buying continued until Thursday. The BoJ’s unwavering dovish stance contrasts with the hawkish actions of the US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England who have begun to boost interest rates higher - a move that is having rippling ramifications on bond price and is hiking up yields globally. The BoJ’s commitment to stopping Japanese government bonds from being swept up in the tide of higher borrowing costs is nothing less than “policy divergence on steroids”, said Antoine Bouvet, a rates strategist.
In the wake of the yen’s fall, Japanese policy makers have escalated their cautions of the negative effects of the sharp yen decline. Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki said that the government will be watching the currency moves to stop the weakening and “bad” yen from further damaging the economy. In response to the government’s warnings, Masafumi Yamamoto, chief FX strategist at Mizuho Securities, said: “The tone of warning from Japanese policymakers has not much changed. MOF bureaucrats must be aware that verbal intervention won’t be effective in reversing the [weak yen] trend.”
ISRAELI - ARAB SUMMIT /
A historic gathering of foreign ministers from Israel, Morocco, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, alongside US secretary of state Anthony Blinken, concluded in the Negev desert on Monday. The gathering came amidst a gust of diplomacy ahead of an expected agreement between the U.S. and Iran to restore the 2015 nuclear deal.
Unthinkable half a decade ago, the high-level summit is the latest sign of a realignment of Middle Eastern relations following the landmark neutralization deal struck two years ago. The convivial images of the leaders and the speeches from the foreign ministers, including Sheikh Adbullah, emphasise the historic significance of the event.
But the real business of the summit happened behind closed doors. The United States wanted to leave the summit with the agreement from the other four countries to fall into line with their hard approach to Russia over its aggression in Ukraine, whilst the Arab League wanted America to be assured that Iran would be restricted.
The two-day summit achieved few concrete resolutions. However, Mr Blinken did assure the Gulf states that if its diplomatic efforts with Iran failed, they would help the Middle East “confront common security challenges and threats, including those from Iran and its proxies.” Mr Blinken’s pacifying rhetoric worked. Emboldened by America’s assurance, Israel’s foreign minister Yair Lapid stated that its partnership with the Arab League will “intimidate and deter our common [enemy].”
Beyond the conversations on Iran and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Israeli-Palestine conflict was also a topic raised at the summit. Several foreign ministers publicly pushed for the need to create an independent Palestinian state, a clear indicator that while they recognise Israel’s legitimacy they have not given up on advocating for the Palestinian cause.
Despite there being no fully formed conclusions to any of the matters discussed at the summit, the foreign ministers appeared united at the new briefing at the summit’s end. They all agreed to meet annually in a different country, evoking optimism that their partnerships will continue to strengthen.
Oscars 2022: Slap Happy
Whether you wanted to or not, by now you’ve probably heard about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at last Sunday night’s Academy Awards. If you haven’t: good on you and (sorry) here’s the story to get you up to speed.
While presenting the Best Documentary award, comedian Chris Rock made light of Jada Pinkett Smith’s, Will’s wife, shaved head. Jada is unimpressed (she suffers from alopecia) while Will laughs before having a sudden change of heart: he strides onto the stage and slaps Chris on the face. Add in a few expletives (Will’s), some stunned movie stars, and an awkward joke from Chris – ‘That was the greatest night in the history of television’ – and you have the gist of it.
By the next morning, the internet was ablaze with raging arguments about who was more in the wrong, endless memes, and celebrity reactions. The buzz has lasted all week: at the time of writing #ChrisandWill is still trending on Twitter and the mainstream media, having done the details to death, have moved onto profile pieces delving into Smith’s marriage, upbringing, and previous run-ins with Rock. In all that chatter, it’s hard to decide where to begin.
One is tempted to say nothing at all and avoid contributing to our wild celebrity-over-indulgence any further, especially given the role it plays in enabling such ego-filled outbursts in the first place. But putting one’s anti-Hollywood sensibilities aside…
Whatever Chris said or did, Will shouldn’t have hit him. Why this is up for debate remains unclear. Will is a public figure with huge influence and with one slap he undid decades of good parenting by ignoring one of its basic tenets: ‘use your words’.
A better decision might have been to wait for his turn on the mic (he won the Oscar for Best Actor twenty minutes later) and deliver a witty one-liner that simultaneously celebrated his wife and put Chris back in his box. Damage control now depends on the repercussions he faces. Apparently, Chris refused to press charges for assault, but the Academy are considering his suspension or expulsion, and people have certainly been cancelled for less.
The more reasonable debate that’s been re-stoked by the incident asks: when is an offensive joke acceptable? The opinions are various: ‘you can punch up but not down’; ‘say what you like as long as it’s funny’; ‘it’s your motivation that matters’; ‘it’s called freedom of speech, duh’.
While the line of acceptability for offensive jokes remains as murky as ever, what’s clear is that comedians aren’t about to stop treading it. But while they do, the line of acceptability for the general public’s behaviour – no matter how rich and famous you are – should be clearer, with ‘hitting someone for telling a joke’ firmly on one side.
THE ARTS SEVER TIES WITH THE SACKLER’S
The British Museum is the latest arts institution to hastily scrub from its walls all references to the Sackler’s - the lavishly philanthropic family inextricably entwined with the ongoing opioid epidemic in the United States.
Announcing its cutting of ties with the Sackler’s on Twitter, chair of the British Museum George Osborne wrote: “The Sackler name will be removed from the galleries, rooms & endowments they supported. We’re moving into a new era, presenting our great collection in different ways for new audiences.” Whilst washing its walls of the Sackler name, the family will remain on a list of donors to the museum’s Great Court. The museum justified its, somewhat contradictory, decision with the statement that it has and always will “recognise the important relationships we have with each of our benefactors.”
While the British Museum is the most prominent cultural institution in Britain to wash its hands of the Sackler’s, it is not the first. In 2019, the Tate announced that it would no longer accept the Sackler’s donations and last month it reported that the plaques marking “the Sackler escalator” and the “Sackler lifts” had been removed. Meanwhile, The Serpentine Sackler gallery has been rebranded as the Serpentine North Gallery. Across the channel, The Musée du Louvre in Paris also disavowed the family’s name. Although it attributed its decision to the expiration of a 20-year naming rather than the family’s involvement in what has been described as “the worst epidemic in American history.”
Earlier this month the Sackler’s reached an agreement with nine district attorneys and the District of Columbia. As part of the settlement, the family said it would not object to the removal of its name from any gallery or museum. Artist Nan Goldin and her activist group PAIN, who have protested at museums and galleries in efforts to oust the Sackler’s, remain optimistic that the announcement will prompt the institutions that still honour the family to follow suit and ditch the name once and for all.
Shortwave revival is a reminder of the BBC’s value to audiences around the world
Around the world, authoritarian regimes are blocking BBC news and information services, seeking to restrict information and control the narrative. In response, an old staple of the information wars of last century has been revived.
In February, Hong Kong banned the BBC's World Service radio from its airwaves, soon after China's decision to bar its World News television channels across China. In early March, the Russian state communications watchdog Roskomnadzore restricted access to the BBC’s Russian websites. Just last Sunday, the Taliban ordered local Afghan channels to remove the Pashto, Persian and Uzbek TV news bulletins that the BBC claims reach some six million people in Afghanistan.
Among these battles in the information wars, the Ukraine conflict is perhaps the most intense, as Ukrainians and Russians seek news and information about the war and the Putin regime seeks to restrict it: in the last week of February, viewership of the BBC’s Ukrainian language website more than doubled from the previous year to 3.9 million visitors. In Russia, the audience for the BBC’s Russian language news website had also surged, more than tripling its weekly average for 2022 to hit a record 10.7 million, while the English language version’s audience had risen by 252% to reach some 423,000.
The Russian blocking of BBC content was triggered, however, by the BBC’s revival of a form of broadcasting previously deemed obsolete in Europe: shortwave radio news bulletins.
Days previously, Russia had struck Kyiv’s TV tower with a double missile strike, as part of a coordinated effort to impose a news blackout in Ukraine. The BBC’s response was to resume shortwave broadcasting in the region for the first time since 2008. They did so in the knowledge that many Ukrainians still own small shortwave radios and could use them even when normal broadcast channels, online access, and mains power had been denied. In south-eastern Russia, shortwave radio offers the same unrestricted information to listeners faced with severely restricted state media coverage of the Ukrainian ‘special operation’, and perhaps unable to access or afford VPN services to bypass online restrictions.
Shortwave radio has far greater broadcast range than other frequencies such as FM, allowing broadcasters to reach listeners from far away, across borders. It is also hard to jam, hence its utility as an asset in the information wars of today as well as last century, despite the best efforts of the current Russian and Chinese regimes. The BBC’s Mandarin service was heavily jammed by China until shortwave transmissions for that service ceased. China continues to jam transmissions in Uzbek and has since started to jam transmissions in English throughout Asia.
For Afghans and other South Asians, the shortwave BBC listening habit never went away, and many consider the BBC World Service’s Persian service to be the de facto national broadcaster of Afghanistan. So while only those with access to satellite TV – some 20% of Afghans – can now still view the BBC’s TV news bulletins, many more will still access BBC news content via their radios.
Back in Russia, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused the BBC of waging ‘unprecedented information terrorism…creating hysteria around Ukrainian events’. While restricting access to BBC content, authoritarian regimes also frequently suggest that their own state-backed media outlets, such as Russia’s RT, have equal standing as a reliable news source. But the BBC’s independent remit as a public service broadcaster (often a source of irritation to UK governments), its editorial standards and practices, and its heritage give it an authority and popularity of its own. In a world awash with data, information and ‘fake news’, it perhaps takes a crackly radio in a Mariupol cellar to demonstrate the kind of news and information service we can all truly value.
And that’s it for this week. I hope you found something of interest that you might want to delve into further. If so, please get in touch at cwilkins@audley.uk.com.
For now, that’s the weekend box officially closed.