Team Abe's grand plan leaves ghosts in charge of a haunted house
As I observe Team Abe in action at the helm of the Bank of Japan and elsewhere, a rather terrifying passage from a poem by William Hughes Mearns comes to mind: "Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't ...
Government reveals contempt for constitution by ignoring it
Actor-emcee Kinya Aikawa has his own TV station on the Net, and because the only ads are for projects involving Aikawa and his equally famous wife, Midori Utsumi, he doesn't worry about making sponsors uncomfortable.
Abe-phoria: A national punching bag morphs into a popular leader
There is an irrational exuberance about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe evident in his 70 percent public-approval rating, a soaring Nikkei stock average and the Japanese media cheerleading the same man it hounded out of office in September 2007. The polite, face-saving fiction that Abe stepped ...
The Bank of Japan's latest survey of business sentiment shows that confidence among major manufacturers improved in the first quarter of 2013.
New bank lobby chief Takeshi Kunibe urged Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to follow through on his pledge to spark private investment through deregulation, a stimulus element the group says is key to boosting anemic loan demand. "Domestic lending is turning around, but it isn't strong ...
Awakening the echoes — loud ones
I sit at a table, drinking with an old friend with whom I share a lot, and not just bar tabs. We have both gulped away most of our adult lives in Japan. Long enough to remember not only the bursting of the economic bubble ...
'Abenomists' beware: Rising prices just one pitfall of spiraling yen
The Bank of Japan on Wednesday installed a new governor and two deputy governors who — in line with the wishes of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — are advocates of ultra-easy monetary policy. Attention is now focused on what specific policy actions the new central ...
As with the deliberations at the Vatican, politics — not doctrinal debate — underpins the decision-making process for the next Bank of Japan governor.
Buying property in the age of Abenomics
According to most business media, now is the time to act if you are thinking about buying a home. Though the Liberal Democratic Party has yet to confirm that it will go ahead with the consumption tax increases the Democratic Party of Japan passed ...
Kuroda should keep his wits on Abe's doorstep
As president of the Manila-based Asian Development Bank, Haruhiko Kuroda spent the past seven years confronting the challenges posed by 48 diverse, dynamic and complex Asia-Pacific economies. If he thought that was hard work, consider what awaits him in Tokyo as he prepares to ...
Upper House poll trumps G-20 critique in Abe's mind
Despite skepticism from G-20 countries, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe may continue his extreme monetary easing until the Upper House election to maintain his approval rating.
