Asian markets tumble after Federal Reserve chief's comments

HONG KONG, April 22 (AFP): Most Asian markets dropped on Friday, trailing Wall Street losses triggered by the US Federal Reserve boss' signal of an aggressive monetary policy tightening cycle and the ongoing economic impact of Covid-19 restrictions in China.
Tokyo ended more than 1.5 percent down even as inflation data from Japan was in line with market expectations and better than elsewhere in the world.
A falling yen, due mainly to the interest rate gap between Japan and the United States, had boosted trade on the Nikkei 225 all of this week, but it was not enough to alleviate concerns around the prospect of rate hikes in the United States.
And a report that Japanese Finance Minister Shunichi Suzuki and US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen have discussed coordinated currency intervention to combat skyrocketing global inflation strengthened the yen on Friday.
Seoul, Sydney, Jakarta, Mumbai and Taipei were also all down.