Economists are divided over how much good Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's new stimulus package will do in terms of sparking extra growth, but there's one thing they do seem to agree on: The Bank of Japan is off the hook for now.
The package announced Thursday includes ¥13.2 trillion of public funds to support an economy that's forecast to shrink this quarter. But the precise time frame for that extra spending isn't clear.
On the bullish side, economist Chotaro Morita at SMBC Nikko Securities said the package could help the economy grow by more than 1.5 percent next fiscal year. More pessimistically, Pantheon Macroeconomics' Freya Beamish says the stimulus won't come quickly enough to prevent the economy from falling into a technical recession.