Forget Cyprus, Japan Is The Real Crisis
Monster stimulus on the way
Is it the right path?
Why Japan will fail
Currency wars to begin in earnest
Asia Confidential excerpt
What was fascinating to watch was the verbal sparring between the outgoing and incoming BoJ governors. In Japan, where group consensus rules, this was almost an outright brawl.
Outgoing Governor Masaaki Shirakawa has never been a believer in the inflationist policies of the new government and he didn’t mince his words in his final days in office:
“Even if prices rise 2% and wages do the same, that won’t mean an improvement in people’s living standards … what we want to achieve is an increase in real economic growth…
… Past figures in Japan as well as in Europe and the U.S. show that the link between monetary base and prices has been broken.”
The latter refers to the fact that printed money in the U.S. and Europe hasn’t flowed through to economies as banks have sat on the money rather than lent it out.