Benjamin Cole | Fed Chair Jerome Powell has stated the Fed’s 2% target is symmetric, which may be code words for “inflation a little above 2% is tolerable.” The US central bank may find fighting inflation resembles heart surgery with a chainsaw.
In the middle of all the trade battles of the US against the rest of the world, the European Union has considered a new strategy of collaboration with other regions and have signed with Japan its largest trade agreement ever. The deal will create an open trade zone covering over 600 million people.
“The JPY’s refusal to heed the BOJ’s quest for higher inflation — a consequence of its role as a funding vehicle in the carry trade—has served up a firm reminder of the immense challenges still facing Shinzo Abe’s Japan,” says BNY Mellon senior currency strategist Neil Mellor.
US companies’ profits have exceeded forecasts by 4.6%, the European ones by 2% and Japanese firms by 6.7%. This has fuelled a strong rally in the stock markets in just a few weeks. But is there room for the markets to rise further?
Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, called a snap election on Monday, cashing in on the increase in popular support for his hard line against North Korea’s ballistic missile programme.
Yoichi Funabashi and Harry Dempse via Caixin |Yoichi Funabashi and Harry Dempse via Caixin | Sino-Japanese relations have been stuck in a political quagmire for over six years. Tensions over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands have resurfaced time and time again since September 2010, when a Chinese fishing boat rammed two Japanese coast guard ships and its captain was arrested by the Japanese.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe signed on Thursday a political agreement on the EU-Japan trade deal, which would be likely completed within months,expectedly by January. Officials said it was not clear at this stage how the EU-Japan deal would be ratified in Europe. Full national ratification gives every national parliament and some regional ones a veto.
Benjamin Cole | Japan has put together a string of five straight quarters of real growth, along with declining unemployment and minute amounts of inflation. Some have recently termed Abenomics “a big success.”
Monetary and fiscal stimulus policies have failed to reactivate consumer confidence in Japan and it declined into a light, but cronic deflation of 0.3% in 2016.
Benjamin Cole | The econosphere is again rumbling about Chinese debt and China banks, evidently forgetting the long serious faces made many times about Chinese debt and China banks in the recent past. But China keeps growing. Japan is another story that defies Western orthodox macroeconomics.