Bank of Japan Walks Back Talk of Rate Increases After Roiling Markets

A week after Japan’s top central banker shook up global markets with comments about raising interest rates, one of his deputies walked them back Wednesday and promised not to raise rates when markets are unstable, the Wall Street Journal reported. The pledge by Bank of Japan Deputy Gov. Shinichi Uchida led to a sharp recovery in Tokyo stock prices and a fall in the yen. That moved markets closer to where they were before the July 31 news conference by Gov. Kazuo Ueda, in which he suggested he wanted to keep raising rates despite lackluster consumer spending in Japan.
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Bank of Japan Raises Rates, Driving Up Yen

The Bank of Japan on Wednesday raised its benchmark interest rate and cited concerns about the historically weak yen, leading to a jump in the Japanese currency, Bloomberg News reported. The decision was the latest sign of a rethink among central banks about the effects of higher interest rates on economic growth. Gov. Kazuo Ueda embraced a view spreading among Japanese officials that a rate increase, normally seen as constricting the economy, could instead help growth by pushing up the yen and reassuring consumers who have had to pay more for imported goods.
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Japan Built Thailand’s Car Industry. Now China Is Gunning for It.

Japanese companies established Thailand’s auto industry virtually from scratch, dating back to the years after World War II. By the late 1970s, Japanese brands commanded around 90 percent of car sales in Thailand. They invested in building Thai supply chains, and their cars were also widely perceived by customers as reliable, the New York Times reported. In the 1990s, American and South Korean automakers targeted the Thai market but barely made a dent in Japan’s share.
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BOJ to Cut Bond Buying as Fate of Rate Policy Stirs Jitters

Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda will have investors on high alert Wednesday when he lays out a detailed plan for quantitative tightening after years of massive easing. He may also double down by adding an interest rate hike to boot, Bloomberg News reported. While only about 30% of BOJ watchers predict a hike as their base-case scenarios, almost nobody is ruling out the possibility, according to a Bloomberg survey. The high degree of uncertainty has propelled the yen and Japanese stocks on a roller coaster ride that’s likely to continue until the decision and beyond.
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Analysis: Japan Wanted Higher Inflation. It’s Here, and It Hurts.

As the rest of the world fought to keep inflation in check, one country welcomed it with open arms. In the past few years, Japan saw a burst of inflation, spurred by pandemic supply chain snags and geopolitical shocks, as a way to shake the economy out of a decades-long cycle of weak growth and pressure from deflation. So while major central banks like the U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates to rein in prices, the Bank of Japan kept rates low as inflation accelerated, the New York Times reported.
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Mt. Gox Creditors Get Crypto Repayments After Decade of Waiting

Mt. Gox creditors are receiving a portion of the roughly $8 billion worth of cryptocurrency they’ve been owed since a hack drove the Tokyo-based exchange into bankruptcy a decade ago, Bloomberg News reported. Kraken has distributed Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash from the Mt. Gox estate, according to a post on the X social media platform from the San Francisco-based exchange’s chief executive. A Kraken spokesperson confirmed the distribution and declined to comment on the specific amount.
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