D Day is Here

Well, not quite, since they aren't actually thinking of raising interest rates anytime soon, but...... ultra loose monetary policy is over (for the time being). Now we get to see what happens next:The Bank of Japan on Thursday asserted its independence by ending an unorthodox ultra-loose monetary policy and shifting to a policy of targeting the overnight call rate.The bank said it would take “a

Japan: D Day Approaching?

Well there is a lot of attention being focused on the 2 day meeting of the Bank of japan which started today. Will tomorrow be Decision Day? Certainly the equity markets are nervous. Dave Altig at MacroBlog had a timely post yesterday about some of the possible pitfalls ahead, and Martin Wolfe has a piece on Japan in today's FT:Japan is back. After almost one and a half decades of disappointment,

More On The Japanese Recovery

The FT has a fairly balanced editorial this morning on Japanese monetary policy and on the potential pitfalls of an over-rapid tightening policy:"There is no need to hurry normalisation. Japan's real economy is in increasingly good health. But the exit from deflation remains recent and tentative. The BoJ's focus on its definition of core inflation - which does not exclude energy prices -