Following The Bank of Japan's voyage into NIRP never-never-land, the market has sent a clear signal of its displeasure and now a growing number of Japanese officials (and former officials) are questioning Kuroda and Abe's Peter-Pan-ic dream that 'they' can fly. Having called for sub-zero rates more than two decades ago, Takeshi Fujimaki, the Japanese banker turned opposition lawmaker, warns "The BOJ is trapped," now that QQE efforts have flattened the yield curve, since "if the curve is steep, banks can make profits even at negative rates. It was a mistake to adopt negative rates after QQE." But it is Fujimaki's parting comment that should have most concerned, "Japan has ballooning debt and the BOJ is financing debt, that’s the problem... it will bust and there will be hyperinflation."
First - once again the lying ensues:
- *KURODA: BOJ EASING IS HAVING INTENDED EFFECTS
Doesn't look like it...
Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s decision to charge for some deposits parked at the central bank is punishing those who hold the cash he just spent 2 1/2 years pumping into the economy. And, as Bloomberg reports, the BOJ is boxing itself into a corner because it won’t be able to stop its asset purchases once inflation takes hold, raising the specter of fiscal collapse as yields soar, 65-year-old Takeshi Fujimaki, the Japanese banker turned opposition lawmaker, said.
"The BOJ is trapped,” Fujimaki, who has been predicting an eventual default in Japan over the past 20 years, said in a Feb. 16 interview at his office in Tokyo. “Minus rates weaken the yen and push up inflation, but the BOJ doesn’t have the courage to expand negative rates because that will expedite a fiscal collapse."
While the European Central Bank has the same policies, Japan’s problem is that it adopted them in the reverse order, flooding the system with cash under qualitative and quantitative easing and then penalizing holders of cash with negative rates, Fujimaki said. That includes the central bank that now owns more than a third of the country’s government bonds.
“As a result of QQE, the yield curve has flattened and because bank deposits aren’t negative, banks are suffering from reserve curve that’s hurting their profitability,” said Fujimaki, who was briefly at Soros Fund Management in 2000, joined the Tokyo office of Morgan Guarantee Trust Co. in 1985 and won his upper house seat in July 2013. “If the curve is steep, banks can make profits even at negative rates. It was a mistake to adopt negative rates after QQE.”
It certainly seems like a problem...
As Bloomberg concludes, Japan has the world’s heaviest debt burden, with the ratio of borrowing to gross domestic product more than twice the average for Group of Seven nations. It will rise to 250 percent by 2018 from 246 percent in 2015, according to the International Monetary Fund.
“Japan has ballooning debt and the BOJ is financing debt, that’s the problem,” Fujimaki said. “The yen will weaken further and the risk heightens of a hard landing. There is no debate on an exit policy, so once the economy improves, it will bust and there will be hyperinflation. ”
And finally, as if that was not enought, just tonight we get more Peter-Pan(ic) ravings - this time from Aso:
- *ASO: SALES TAX IMPORTANT FOR CONFIDENCE IN GOVT. BONDS
- *ASO: NO DOUBT THAT JAPAN ECONOMIC FUNDAMENTALS ROBUST
Well with JGB yields at record lows after all the idiocy they have done, "confidence" may be misplaced. But as far as "robust" economic fundamentals - that is a fairy tale that noone believes:
There's this...
- *JAPAN 4Q PRIVATE CONSUMPTION FELL 0.8% Q/Q
Or this...
Oh, and this...
But apart from that - yeah, it's robust. Are Japanese leaders simply relying on a media that is now under their direct control and a population aging into senility that will soon be unable to comprehend anything?