Whatever the case, you've got to hand it to the banksters: They've kept the bubble floating along long enough for Goldman's best pal Hillary Clinton to come within arm's length of the White House.
This week's much-anticipated Bank of Japan policy meeting sounds, in the end, like nothing special: -The BoJ did not change its commitment to keeping 10 year bonds at 0%. -They did not change the short-term interest rate of -0.1% on commercial bank deposits, -They announced no additional easing measures.
In other words, nothing changed. But that's surprising because the material circumstances around the bank have indeed changed. Or, to be more accurate, the bank's announced perception of those circumstances have changed.
Specifically, the BoJ is now expecting the Japanese economy to reach the magical 2% inflation rate that the bank has been targeting in fiscal 2018 instead of fiscal 2017. So, despite the fact that the bank has admitted they are falling behind in their plans, they are doing nothing to change course.
Now those in the reality-based community will know that Japan is not going to hit that 2% target any time soon no matter what the BoJ does or doesn't do. That's been clear for years now, if not decades. But the BoJ has at least put on the pretense that it is going to have some kind of effect on the economy...eventually. With this week's policy meeting, however, it looks as if the BoJ is essentially taking their hands off the wheel and leaving the Abe administration to take the blame for the inevitable catastrophe that is “Abenomics.”
This is interesting if only because the last 8 years of non-recovery have been completely predicated on the notion that all of this central bank intervention (first the Fed's QE programs, then the ECB and BoJ versions) have been at least theoretically capable of kick-starting the economy. If the BoJ resigns itself to being unable to even reach a 2% inflation target despite having engaged on an unprecedented ETF buying spree that has made it a top 10 holder in 90% of the nation's stocks, then they are essentially throwing in the towel on this era of central bank-pumped bond bubble insanity. Can the ECB and the Fed be far behind?
Whatever the case, you've got to hand it to the banksters: They've kept the bubble floating along long enough for Goldman's best pal Hillary Clinton to come within arm's length of the White House. The only question is whether they'll wait till she's in office to pull the plug.