Japan

Japan’s central bank took the unusual step Thursday of intervening in the market to stem the yen’s decline against the U.S. dollar, the Associated Press reported. Earlier in the day, the dollar rose to nearly 146 yen — a 24-year low — after the Bank of Japan left its key lending rate unchanged following the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to raise its benchmark rate by three-quarters of a percentage point. The dollar later fell sharply to about 142 yen. It was trading at 143.05 yen early Thursday morning U.S.

The Bank of Japan’s outlier status is set to become even more acute this week with central banks from the Federal Reserve to the Swiss National Bank expected to raise borrowing costs, Bloomberg News reported. Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda and his fellow board members are seen standing pat at the end of a two-day meeting Thursday that comes just hours after the Fed unleashes what’s likely to be a third-straight interest rate hike of 75 basis points. With the BOJ likely to be clinging to the world’s only negative policy rate, its dovish stance may send the embattled yen sliding again.

Japan's core consumer inflation quickened to 2.8% in August, hitting its fastest annual pace in nearly eight years and exceeding the central bank's 2% target for a fifth straight month as price pressure from raw materials and yen weakness broadened, Reuters reported. The strength of August inflation reinforced growing suspicions among economists that price pressure will last longer than the Bank of Japan (BOJ) has been expecting, though many still expect no immediate change to its ultra-easy policy.

Japan’s financial watchdog plans to examine how global investment banks sell controversial structured bonds in the country, a sign that a crackdown on the products is gathering pace, Bloomberg News reported. The Financial Services Agency will check whether the main issuers of such products disclose enough information to local financial firms, which buy and then distribute them to retail investors across the country, the people said, declining to be named as the discussions are private. Japan’s FSA will also look into the fees charged.

Japan's household spending grew for a second straight month in July despite a resurgence in COVID-19 cases, but inflationary pressures from the yen's slump to a 24-year-low have cast doubt over a revival in consumption, Reuters reported. From falling real wages to shrinking service sector activity, data this week has shown private consumption stalling, undermining some of the gains made in April-June.

Japan's Ministry of Finance (MOF) has raised its assumed interest rate used to calculate debt servicing costs in its budget request for the next fiscal year, a senior ministry official said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The ministry has set the assumed interest rate at 1.3%, up from 1.2% the previous year, reflecting rises in long-term rates, the official told reporters. It marks the first increase in assumed interest rates since fiscal 2007/08 when the assumed rates increased to 2.9% from 2.7%, the official said.

CEC, the company that has been running the dealer school Japan Casino Academy, received an order for commencement of bankruptcy proceedings from the Tokyo District Court on 17 August, Inside Asian Gambling reported. CEC was originally established in September 2014 in Shibuya. The company’s debt is currently being calculated. CEC opened Japan Casino Academy with the goal of training professional casino dealers. In addition to operating multiple campuses in Tokyo, there were also locations in Osaka, Nagoya, Fukuoka and Sapporo.

Japan’s economy has begun to grow again as consumers, fatigued from more than two years of the pandemic, moved away from precautions that have kept coronavirus infections at among the lowest levels of any wealthy country, the New York Times reported. Lockdowns in China, soaring inflation and brutally high energy prices could not suppress Japan’s economic expansion as domestic consumption of goods and services shot up in the second three months of the year.

The world’s third largest economy recovered to its pre-pandemic size in the second quarter, as consumer spending picked up following the end of coronavirus curbs on businesses, Bloomberg News reported. Gross domestic product grew at an annualized pace of 2.2% in the second quarter of this year, coming in below the median estimate of 2.6%, Cabinet Office data showed Monday. That lifted the size of the economy to 542.1 trillion yen ($4.1 trillion), above what it was at the end of 2019. First quarter GDP was revised to an expansion from a prior contraction.