O n March 19th officials at the Bank of Japan (BoJ) announced that, with sustainable inflation of 2% “in sight”, they would scrap a suite of measures instituted to pull the economy out of its deflationary doldrums—marking the end of a radical experiment. The bank raised its interest-rate target on overnight loans for the first time since 2007, from between minus 0.1% and zero to between zero and 0.1%, becoming the last central bank to scrap its negative-interest-rate policy. It will also stop buying exchange-traded funds and abolish its yield-curve-control framework, a tool to cap long-term bond yields. Even so, the BoJ stressed that its stance would remain accommodative: the withdrawal of its most unconventional policies does not augur the beginning of a tightening cycle.
This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Interesting times”
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