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After decades of stifled, lackluster growth and negative interest rates in Japan, it may take a...

  • Monday, April 30, 2012, 8:06 PM ET
    After decades of stifled, lackluster growth and negative interest rates in Japan, it may take a political remedy to move the rigid, ultra-conservative Bank of Japan to act more boldly on its policies. Some politicians are now calling for changes in the Bank of Japan Act that would make the BOJ more accountable, or even hand some control over to the Diet to help manage the country's monetary policy.
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This news story has 4 comments:

  • Sounds like the author is just another inflation run-of-the-mill Keynesian to us.

    The author needs to provide some proof to back up his nonsense:
    1) GDP - has GDP declined?
    2) GDP per capita - are citizens worse off now?
    3) low inflation - citizens are certainly much better off in being able to buy cheaper housing and cheaper equity assets. Or is the argument that the capitalists have not been able to recover the large losses they suffered from the huge bubble?
    4) Yen - has appreciated at least 2x, thus citizens able to buy imports much cheaper. A plus for standards of living.
    5) Trade surplus - continues to generate large trade surpluses.
    6) Debt writedowns - why have bankruptcies and recapitalizations not been done. The traditional solution to excessive debt. Of course to protect the wealthy and connected, namely bank shareholders and bondholders and other vested interest groups.

    The author needs to make a comparative and quantitative case instead of political rhetoric about Keyensian type solutions and inflation is the only solution nonsense. Which are all really about picking winners and losers and largely protecting the status quo from losses that they rightfully should take. Privatizing profits and socializing losses is no real solution except for perhaps those that get protected from the losses at the expense of everyone else.
    30 Apr 2012, 10:01 PM Reply Like
  • it could be worse than it is, but japan once had higher gdp per capita than the US. This is obviously no longer the case.
    1 May 2012, 12:25 AM Reply Like
  • Perhaps the BOJ could just stop selling Japanese debt to Japanese citizens.
    30 Apr 2012, 10:59 PM Reply Like
  • japan hasn't had negative interest rates or even negative real interest rates. It's impossible to have negative real interest rates when you have deflation.
    1 May 2012, 12:20 AM Reply Like
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