Tag Archives: Bank of Japan

The US dollar is mostly weaker today.  It appears to be consolidating the gains scored since the reversal on May 3. Sterling and the Australian dollar are leading the way early in Europe.   The Australian dollar’s gains appear more intuitively clear.  The minutes from the recent RBA meeting indicated that it was a closer decision.  This means that a follow-up rate cut next month is unlikely, which is what we have argued.  While short-term participants may be surprised today, the...

  Deluded Central Planners BoJ governor Haruhiko Kuroda Photo credit: Toru Hanai / Reuters Zerohedge recently reported on an interview given by Lithuanian ECB council member Vitas Vasiliauskas, which demonstrates how utterly deluded the central planners in the so-called “capitalist” economies of the West have become. His statements are nothing short of bizarre (“we are magic guys!”) – although he is of course correct when he states that a central bank can never “run out of ammunition”....

Things are increasingly upside down in the brave new centrally planned world: thanks to negative deposit rates central banks have put an explicit cost on saving, while in various instances, such as taking out a mortgage in Denmark and the Netherlands, the bank actually pays the borrower, thus rewarding living beyond one's means. Curiously, it was just a month ago when an offer was spotted in Germany offering a negative -1% rate on small consumer loans issued by Santander Bank.  ...

The current financial market volatility increasingly reflects loss of faith in policy makers. Celebrity central bankers are learning that they must constantly produce new miracles for their followers. First, the measures implemented since 2009 created an artificial stability and an asset price boom in many markets. But the absolute rate of GDP expansion and level of price changes is inadequate to solve global debt problems. Second, new initiatives seem the risky response of clever...

“At the end of the day, negative interest rates are taxes in sheep’s clothing. Few economists would ever claim that raising taxes on households will stimulate spending. So why would they think negative interest rates will?” Those are the shocking words of St.Louis Fed Director of Research Christopher Waller whose brief note today will be required reading for everyone at The Bank of Japan, The ECB and every other central banker on the verge of NIRP… If you pick up any principles of...

In an interesting interview with Finanz und Wirtschaft, Bianco Research president Jim Bianco discusses a variety of topics such as negative interest rates turning the entire credit process upside down, bank balance sheets being even more complex and concentrated than before the financial crisis, energy loans being an accident waiting to happen, the markets having veto power over the Fed, and gold having more room to run. * * * Mr. Bianco, negative interest are causing a lot of stir at the...

When Denmark introduced negative interest rates in 2012, it was a pioneer. But the policy has become such an accepted part of central banks’ toolbox in the years since that financial pundits hardly batted an eyelash when Hungary became the world’s sixth central bank to introduce negative rates in March 2016. As the practice becomes more widespread, the question of how low interest rates can go has become increasingly relevant for investors.   While every country (or region, in the case...

Was the Bank of Japan’s surprise foray into negative interest rates this January truly motivated, as some have said, by a desire to weaken the yen? Watch Tomomi Inada, Chair of the Policy Research Council for Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party, discuss the central bank’s dramatic policy shift.  

The Bank of Japan and the ECB are assisting me in teaching the world’s savers, banking clients and corporations about the benefits of blockchain-based finance for the masses. How? Today, the Wall Street Journal published “Negative Rates: How One Swiss Bank Learned to Live in a Subzero World“: Alternative Bank Schweiz AG late last year became Switzerland’s first bank to comprehensively pass along negative rates to all of its customers. Violating an almost religious precept in the financial...

The Bank of Japan and the ECB are assisting me in teaching the world's savers, banking clients and corporations about the benefits of blockchain-based finance for the masses. How? Today, the Wall Street Journal published "Negative Rates: How One Swiss Bank Learned to Live in a Subzero World": Alternative Bank Schweiz AG late last year became Switzerland’s first bank to comprehensively pass along negative rates to all of its customers. Violating an almost religious precept in the financial...