The Bank of Japan's (BOJ, the central bank) immediate reaction to the events of March 11th was to establish an emergency committee under the governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, to monitor the state of Japan's capital markets and formulate any necessary remedial policies. Almost immediately it announced that it would keep policy interest rates at their very low level for a long time, while also expanding the volume of funds available to the money markets and buying up any risky assets that private institutions shunned owing to the uncertainty generated by the disaster. The BOJ also increased the supply of capital that it offers to commercial banks in order to prevent them from experiencing a shortage of liquidity that might cripple other parts of the economy. Then, when in mid-March the activities of international investors caused the value of the yen to rise in the foreign exchange market owing to their expectations that Japanese companies and financial institutions would repatriate funds in order to pay for the country's reconstruction, the BOJ organised (with the central banks of several other leading economies) an intervention in the foreign exchange market to depress the exchange rate. Since then the bank has offered several additional forms of lending on preferential terms to financial intermediaries and companies situated in the devastated Tohoku region. Subsequently, in mid-April Mr Shirakawa, in an effort to assuage the anxiety of overseas investors, gave a speech in the US, describing the March disaster and the BOJ's countermeasures. However, when responding to questions he suggested that the bank remained concerned about domestic policies that would weaken the yen in international markets. He did not explain how this statement comported with the BOJ's many statements that the stronger yen would harm the Japanese economy or its decision in mid-March to enlist the help of foreign central banks to weaken that currency.