More Bank of Japan News:

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/boj-releases-decade-old-inflation-025643569.html

Kuroda and the Bank of Japan, since 2013, set on the noble and understandable path of targeting an inflation rate of 2%. However, as of now, the target rate has not be reached. Kuroda has mentioned that maybe it was not the best idea to continually focus on consumer spending, or try to increase consumer spending.

Inflation might be related to increases in rising supply costs of products or it might be related to increases in demand of consumers. Inflation can increase due to rising prices in both areas.

I have watched the Japan economy since the 1990's. The Japanese economy, seems, for whatever reason, to be a very unique case, in that it doesn't seem to operate like other economies, again for whatever reason.

Some would say the 1990's was a "lost decade", meaning either low economic growth or no economic growth. However, if we look at the data, statistics, we would probably see the Japanese economy grew in the 1% range through much of the 1990's.

The problem is/was, the economy didn't grow like the 1980's with maybe uncontrolled growth due to out of control asset inflation prices, when Japan businesses were buying everything in site in Tokyo and around the world.

When the asset bubble burst, it set in motion low economic growth, very much different from the 1980's. Japan at the time was unable to cope with the "low growth" that became the fixture of the 1990's.

Perhaps, and this can be debated, Japan grew too fast, in that, now it could not bring about the resources needed to reach the same growth rate at the 80's.

Perhaps, also, Japan had reached, maybe too fast, the status of a mature economy, which means 2 to 3%+ growth every year, was not going to happen again except for a quarter here or there.

Consistent 3% economic growth for Japan, maybe will never happen again.

Back to the idea of the 2% inflation rate. Perhaps Kuroda and the BOJ, has focused too much on the inflation rate.

Intuitively, it seems like, its not going to happen. Japan is a very stable economy. As the 3rd largest economy in the world, it is still have very large economy, which means there is still a lot of economic activity.

The idea that Japan is in trouble doesn't reach a 2% level ever, maybe is not exactly a good idea.

The economy is still moving forward, it is still growing.

Maybe a low growth rate is the "new normal" or the "new norm" now for Japan, and the BOJ should focus on maintaining economic growth and not focus too much on inflation.

Consumer demand, consumer spending in Japan has always been a challenge even though it might be 60/70% of the economy.

Consumer spending seems to be adequate to maintain a "new normal" economic growth for now.

Continuing to target inflation and continuing to target or increase consumer spending may be fruitless in the "new normal" economic growth period that Japan is in now.

Again, the Japanese economy is a very stable economy has settled into a new norm of about 1% every year for economic growth.

Maybe the Bank of Japan should focus on other areas instead of trying fruitlessly to target an inflation rate that might never happen.


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