Japan

In the three and a half years since he won the Japanese prime minister’s office on a pledge to rekindle economic growth, Shinzo Abe has tried many tactics to coax the economy into expanding, the International New York Times reported. He persuaded the central bank to flood the country with cheap money. He sanctioned a sharp fall in the value of the yen, a boon for big exporters like Toyota and Panasonic. And he increased government spending, pouring cash into areas as varied as day care and defense. The result has been well short of the renaissance Mr. Abe promised.

The Bank of Japan may have begun to retreat from its “whatever it takes” policy stance, effectively shifting pressure to the government to use fiscal spending and structural changes to help revive the economy, The Wall Street Journal reported. The central bank announced only a modest dose of monetary stimulus Friday, disappointing investors who expected a bolder move to complement a new government spending package. That alone was taken as confirmation by many economists that the BOJ has run up against the limits of monetary policy.

The Bank of Japan can hold off on expanding monetary stimulus if market turbulence caused by Britain’s vote to leave the European Union proves temporary, a former central bank executive said on Monday, the Irish Times reported. But Japan has the right to intervene in markets to stem sharp yen rises based on a shared understanding among G7 and G20 nations that excessive currency moves are undesirable, said Kazuo Momma, who was the BOJ’s executive director overseeing international affairs until May.

When he took office, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe vowed to restore Japan’s economy to robust health and win the country’s long battle with deflation, The Wall Street Journal reported. Wednesday’s decision by Mr. Abe to put off a planned tax increase is a stark signal that he hasn’t delivered yet, and it isn’t clear when he can. The move risks making it harder for Japan to lighten its enormous debt burden. But as Mr. Abe saw it, his country’s economic weakness left him little choice.

Some 45 per cent of Japan’s households now include one person aged 65 years or more, government figures show, underlining how swiftly the country is moving towards a costly demographic inflection point, the Financial Times reported. The quickening advance towards a crossover point that will change the country’s economic landscape and the companies serving it, comes with a shrinking dependency ratio. By 2060, there will be 1.3 Japanese of working age (15-64) for every person over 65, according to a government white paper on ageing.

$2,411,412,137,427. That figure — $2.4 trillion for those with an untrained eye for very large numbers — is in the same ballpark as the annual economic output of France. It is also exactly the amount that people around the world claim they lost when Mt. Gox, the Tokyo-based virtual currency exchange, collapsed into bankruptcy in 2014, after huge, unexplained losses of the volatile digital currency Bitcoin, the International New York Times reported. As with most of the people who lost money with Bernard L.

Increasing prices are a big deal in Japan. The country’s sluggish economy means that the cost of most things has not risen in 20 years, and almost any increase makes headlines, the International New York Times reported. Consumer prices are a painful economic headache for Japan. The country’s officials have been trying to break this stubborn pattern of deflation by pumping money into the economy and bolstering public spending.

Officials and market participants agree that the Bank of Japan ought to do more to beat deflation, but they are divided over whether the central bank’s policy-setting board members have to do so this week, The Wall Street Journal reported. Economic data offer plenty of reasons for easing at the central bank’s two-day meeting, which concludes Thursday. The economy is at risk of shrinking in the second quarter because of earthquakes that shook southern Japan recently.

Japan’s prime minister insists he will raise consumption tax to 10 per cent next year and has hinted that another economic stimulus package is being planned, the Financial Times reported. Shinzo Abe said before leaving for Washington he would press ahead with the tax rise unless there was a natural disaster or economic blow as big as the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. But Mr Abe also began to prepare for another fiscal stimulus, already under discussion within his party, and warned of downside risks to the global economy.

Skymark Airlines Inc. exited bankruptcy administration and forecast its first operating profit in three years after reducing its fleet, cutting routes and securing new funding, The Japan Times reported on a Bloomberg News story. The carrier expects to report ¥1.5 billion ($13 million) in operating profit and sales of ¥70 billion for the year ending March 31, Skymark said in a statement Monday. Skymark also said it’s targeting an “early relisting” of its shares after filing for bankruptcy protection last year. Private equity firm Integral Corp.