Matthew C Klein, Columnist

Sony Shouldn't Play Soros's Currencies Games

Sony's new PlayStation 4 game consoleÂ is actually a sign that Sony is managing its operations responsibly.

August 9, 2013 at 7:47 PM UTC

Matthew C. Klein writes for Bloomberg View about the economy and financial markets. He previously wrote for the Economist magazine and its economics blog, Free Exchange. Before that, Klein was a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he spent more than two years studying the history of the Federal Reserve and the intellectual history of monetary economics for an upcoming book by Sebastian Mallaby. He also worked at Bridgewater Associates, where he studied the economies of Central and Eastern Europe and advised institutional investors on asset-liability management. Klein has a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University. Originally from Chicago, he lives in New York.

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Lots of people are excited about Sony's new PlayStation 4 game console. Unfortunately for Sony, as Bloomberg News reports, the declining value of the yen threatens the profitability of what should otherwise be a smash hit. Although it might not seem that way to investors or analysts, this is actually a sign that Sony is managing its operations responsibly.

To see why, it helps to remember a quiz I was given when I was a young pup in the investment-management business. One question concerned a hypothetical Canadian brewing company that wanted to open a plant in Japan. Should it finance this investment by borrowing in Canadian dollars or yen? The answer is that the brewer should probably borrow in yen.