Jan 23, 2013

Manipulation of a key index

Even during Japan's bubble economy of the late '80s, average annual inflation was 0.7 percentage point shy of the just-adopted 2 percent target.

May 2, 2012

Lightening the load on businesses

The Bank of Japan on Friday announced that it will boost the size of its asset purchase program by ¥5 trillion. The decision follows an earlier decision in February to add ¥10 trillion to the program. As a result, the total size of the ...

Mar 14, 2012

Japan's cautionary tale for the U.S.

by Robert J. Samuelson

Since the financial crisis, a shadow has hovered over the U.S. economy: Japan. Could what happened there happen to us? The bursting of Japan’s real estate and stock bubble in the early 1990s has had lasting consequences: a “lost decade” (actually, two) of meager ...

Mar 8, 2012

The real 'China threat'

Considerable attention has been devoted to the threat seemingly posed by the growth of China’s power and influence. It seems like every week the country is marking some new “first” in its military modernization program, all of which are said to be underwritten by ...