BOJ Gov Kuroda offers bleak view on economy

An appropriate Yen rate would help. ¥150 to $1.00

There is precisely ZERO the BOJ can to to ease reductions in either supply or demand.

Demand isn’t suppressed because interest rates are too high. It’s suppressed because people are frightened.

Supply chains are not being shredded by a lack of liquidity. Like a broken heart, only time and patience can fix them.

And if Kuroda really expected the Japanese economy to rebound in the 4th quarter, I have real doubts about his competence.

The only solution these silver-spoon patricians ever have is to print up money, debase the currency, and devalue everyone's savings.

Then they pretend not to know why the working class continues to struggle.

 if Kuroda really expected the Japanese economy to rebound in the 4th quarter, I have real doubts about his competence.

That's the thing. The fact that he keeps doing the same thing over and over and over again while expecting some different results proves just how mind numbingly incompetent he is.

Poor virus, being made the scapegoat for the lackluster economy. The economy was already in the doldrums due to abenomics and the pathetic export controls. In 2019 according to the OECD, Japan's GDP per capita fell below South Korea's. That ain't the virus' fault. This is nothing but Abe and his accomplices always trying to find an excuse, blame others, or whitewash the facts.

@Reckless: Not all. Most of money I bring to Japan is in dollars.

RecklessToday 08:55 am JST

An appropriate Yen rate would help. ¥150 to $1.00

Really? Oil will go through the roof as well as all imported items. Will you survive on cheap green tea and onigiri?

I would take what 'Tom' (a poster-of-many-identities) says with a pinch of salt. This "¥150 to $1.00" schtick has been their mantra over the years.

On the bright-side, the oldie company executives have a new excuse after blaming everything on "Lehman shock" for years.

",.. print up money, debase the currency, and devalue everyone's savings."

I didn't realize the yen has been "debased." My yen savings have held up very well versus my home country's currency and currencies of the countries I have visited over the past 20 years or so....all while the BOJ was "printing up" plenty of yen.

Is the outlook more bleak than it has been for the past twenty years or is he just repeating the same old prediction? The Japanese economy has been going further and further down the toilet since the late 90’s.

Perhaps what’s needed is another tax hike coupled with stimulus spending to offset the impact of the tax hike.

/s

Is someone going to pop in here and tell us that “things are ticking along nicely”???

Japan is still primarily an export based economy, not a capital, intelligent economy. A capital, intelligent economy should be the likeliness of France, Germany and the US. In the case of Germany, it is fascinating that Germans pulled themselves out of the bootstrap to escape the American domination over Europe. Germany became an economy that profits from capital-intensive activities, finances and technology/intelligence aka patents. The proof of Germany's success lies in their perseverance against the Plaza Accord, which Japan fell so spectacularly. Ever since, Japan is never able to pull itself back and has to rely an export economy that ever competes against China, South Korea, Vietnam and India. The game is getting harder everyday as Japanese population ages.

The bleak view of Japan is owed to the incompetence of their predecessors in 1980s. They ruined Japan's chance to at least become like today Germany or France if those bureaucrats actually reformed the entire system. Introducing women into workforce, teaching multiple languages for students, liberalizing the economy (literally), advances technology/science and creativity through a progressive education system. It would be very least like South Korea today, in term of reforms. No amount of QE can save Japan at this point unless the country bows to become a territory of the US like what UK is going to be after Brexit.

Haruhiko Kuroda was all smiles and smiles when he was appointed Bank of Japan Governor by P.M. Shinzo Abe in 2013 and again in 2018. He must have been a strong instigator and driving force for Abe's so-called Abenomics. 

Presumably, Abe's agenda for a constitutional revision was to revitalize Japan's economy for starters and then work with the revision of the constitution. But this scheme seems to have hit a rock, not once but many times. The most recent one is the novel coronavirus. 

Kuroda's wry expression tells how things have gone awry. His bleak outlook on the economy is Abe’s also.  Abe must have a pessimistic view on the constitutional revision, in addition.

In Japan, some dinosaurs are still living !

Kuroda has again and angain made same evaluations and gave same reactions, without any results to the crowd.

I wonder up to what level of debts and population level can Japan remain floating...

Everything has end and money will one day lose confidence against investors.

I would not bet that this situation can last for another generation if the USA pull back little by little.

How much more of this can the peons take; those true believers in promises of better days to come that never seem to get any closer but forever recede into the distance? How many more loaves and fishes empty platitudes about miraculous arrows that will relieve the burden on backs already bent double under the yoke of plantation massa Abe and his crony confreres. And all our self-appointed betters can come up with is more of the same.

The Japanese economy has been going further and further down the toilet since the late 90’s.

Housing quality, infrastructure and other other key indicators of living standards have improved remarkably since the late 90s, in case you haven't noticed. If things had been "going down the toilet" for so long, I wouldn't still be living here -- and I suspect you and the other doom-sayers wouldn't either.