photo: Nicolas Raymond The Land of the Rising Sun emerged from the prolonged stagnation of the 1990s by carrying out various initiatives such as deregulation, privatisation and fiscal consolidation; these methods remain relevant today for many developed and developing countries. For some developed countries, the crisis that began in 2008 was far from being the […]
photo: Jordon Cheung Japan’s monetary gamble and Abenomics are approaching the end of the road. Neither Brussels nor Washington is immune to the adverse consequences of Tokyo’s monetary exhaustion, says Dan Steinbock. Recently, Japan’s second quarter GDP growth was revised up to 0.7 percent, after four consecutive quarters of stagnation. But don’t set your hopes […]
photo: faungg Since the initial spike higher when the BOJ provided some operational tweaks to its asset purchase program on December 18, the dollar has fallen 5.6% against the yen through Tuesday’s low near JPY116.70. We had warned that the break of JPY120 would spur a move to JPY118, and the move below JPY118 targeted the August low near JPY116.20. While […]
Japan’s recession is not paving the way for sustained growth. It is prolonging new debt and liquidity and thus deteriorating fiscal discipline. In the last quarter, Japan’s economy fell into recession. In the West, it was characterized as “unexpected.” The realities are precisely the reverse. With its third ’lost decade,’ Japan has entered an era […]
The recent move by the Bank of Japan to take further measures to accelerate the rate at which it ramps up its balance sheet took almost everyone – market watchers included – completely by surprise. The consequence was reasonably predictable – the yen has once more fallen strongly against almost all major currencies – and […]
“What strikes me, also, is the extent of intellectual confusion that remains.” – Paul Krugman, Europanic 2.0 “The problem is that Germany has continued to maintain highly competitive labor costs and run huge surpluses since the bubble burst — and that in a depressed world economy, this makes Germany a significant part of the problem.” […]
“People should seriously consider that Japan’s economy may have fallen into recession despite the weaker yen and a stock rally from the BOJ’s easing and the flexible fiscal policy by Abe’s administration,” said Maiko Noguchi, senior economist at Daiwa Securities. “Initial expectations that the economy could withstand the negative effects of a sales tax hike […]
By now it should be clear that the monetary experiment currently being carried out in Japan (known as “Abenomics”) is fundamentally different from the kind of quantitative easing which was implemented in the United States and the United Kingdom during the global financial crisis. In the US and the UK QE was implemented in order […]
Is something in the air? Do I detect a change in consensus on the way things are going in Japan? Certainly a slew of articles have been published in the financial press over the last month questioning where the Abenomics experiment is headed for. The general conclusion seems to be that wherever it is it […]
India’s newly elected prime minister, Narendra Modi, made his first geostrategic move in Asia’s complex new dynamics this week, and together with Prime Minister Abe, catapulted the Japan-India relationship into a “special strategic and global partnership.” Two goals focused their attention: bolstering their national economies and contending with China’s growing influence. While their ambitions for their partnership may […]