The bond vigilantes are getting antsy about Shinzo Abe's shock-therapy program, dubbed "Abenomics."
The reference here is to traders who protest fiscal or monetary policies that they consider inflationary, and they sell bonds. Japan has become their latest target. Yields on benchmark government bonds rose to the 1 percent mark briefly last week amid concerns that radical Bank of Japan policies will raise interest rates and worsen an already-crushing debt burden.
Some increase in yields should be expected as the BOJ tries to end deflation. A central tenet of Abenomics, after all, is to push investors away from bonds and toward stocks in order to buttress confidence. What made the yield increase different was its speed and how assertively the BOJ charged into the market. It injected an additional ¥2 trillion ($19.4 billion) into the financial system to stem volatility, pushing yields back to 0.85 percent.