The Bank of Japan may abandon its 10-year bond yield cap as early as next year on growing prospects that inflation and wages will overshoot expectations, said Takeo Hoshi, an academic with close ties to incumbent central bank policymakers, Reuters reported. The BOJ must maintain an ultraloose policy for the time being to convince the public that it is serious about reflating the economy long enough to generate sustained inflation, said Hoshi, an economics professor at the University of Tokyo.
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The Japanese subsidiary of Sam Bankman-Fried’s failed crypto empire FTX has put together a draft plan for clients to withdraw funds, in what would be one of the rare cases of investors getting money back from the collapsed exchange, Bloomberg News reported. The proposal, which has yet to be finalized, centers on using a platform called Liquid to facilitate the return of assets starting in January. Bankman-Fried’s sprawling tangle of FTX group companies slid into a chaotic bankruptcy on Nov.
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User assets at the Japanese arm of FTX Trading have stayed safely apart from the rest of the collapsing cryptocurrency exchange group, and "we're working toward returning them as our top priority," FTX Japan Chief Operations Officer Seth Melamed told Nikkei on Tuesday. Withdrawals at FTX Japan remain halted amid the turmoil engulfing Bahamas-based parent FTX Trading, which is undergoing Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings in the U.S. The Japanese company has roughly 19 billion yen ($134 million) in user assets, including dormant accounts.
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South Korea should avoid following Japan’s lead of using fiscal and monetary stimulus to combat the challenges of an aging economy, central bank Governor Rhee Chang-yong said, urging reforms instead to boost fertility, Bloomberg News reported. Aging is a rising concern in the developed world and Korea is among the hardest-hit together with Japan. South Korea shattered its own record for the world’s lowest fertility rate last year, adding to long-term pressure on policy makers to keep interest rates low and fiscal stimulus ample to boost growth.
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Japan’s inflation hit its fastest clip in 40 years in October, an outcome that puts the central bank in an even more awkward position as it tries to explain the need to stick with monetary stimulus to pursue stable price growth, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer prices excluding fresh food climbed 3.6% in October from a year ago, with the acceleration driven by processed food and the fading impact of mobile phone fee cuts, the internal affairs ministry reported Friday. The reading outpaced a 3.5% forecast by analysts and marks the fastest price growth since 1982.
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Japan’s economy, the world’s third largest, unexpectedly shrank in the three-month period from July to September, as a weak yen and high inflation eroded Japanese consumers’ buying power and sapped businesses’ strength, the New York Times reported. The economy contracted at an annualized rate of 1.2 percent during the third quarter, government data showed on Tuesday, ending nine months of growth and setting back the country’s recovery just as Japan was adjusting to life with looser coronavirus restrictions.
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Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said on Monday the central bank would stick to monetary easing to support the economy for the present and in order to achieve sustainable and stable inflation accompanied by wage growth in the future, Reuters reported. "We are at a stage where we will continue monetary easing to firmly back economic activity at present," Kuroda told a meeting with business leaders in Nagoya in central Japan.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Tuesday he will speed up the drafting and passage of a law to regulate the collection of donations by religious groups and protect families of believers after he met with victims of the Unification Church and was heartbroken by their “horrendous experiences,” the Associated Press reported.
Japan said on Friday that it would subsidize around 20 percent of the average family’s electric bill, part of a sweeping economic package that comes as the country struggles with high food and energy prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and a yen trading at decades-long lows, the New York Times reported. The total package, which weighs in at over $200 billion, includes a wide variety of economic measures, ranging from individual payments to families with children to fuel subsidies for the transportation industry.
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Japan's factory output fell in September for the first time in four months as manufacturers took a hit from rising costs for raw materials and the global economic slowdown. But in a brighter sign for the world's third-largest economy, retail sales grew for a seventh straight month, raising hopes for a sustainable boost in consumption after the easing of COVID-19-related border controls for foreign tourists earlier this month, Reuters reported.
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