Japan May Sell U.S. Treasuries After Quake, Brown Brothers Says

Japan may sell some of its foreign holdings, including U.S. debt, to finance increased spending after the country’s strongest earthquake left millions without electricity or water, according to Brown Brothers Harriman & Co.

“The scope for, again, massive fiscal spending, seems to be there,” Win Thin, the firm’s head of emerging-markets strategy at Brown Brothers in New York, said in a Bloomberg radio interview on “Bloomberg Surveillance” with Ken Prewitt. “If they have to raise these funds domestically, they may have to sell some of their holdings elsewhere.”