{"id":20859,"date":"2016-06-04T08:14:38","date_gmt":"2016-06-04T13:14:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20859"},"modified":"2016-06-04T08:14:38","modified_gmt":"2016-06-04T13:14:38","slug":"turning-stones-into-bread-the-japanese-miracle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=20859","title":{"rendered":"Turning Stones Into Bread \u2013 The Japanese Miracle"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Turning Stones Into Bread \u2013 The Japanese Miracle\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
Stuffing the Futon<\/strong><\/div>\n
\n

Our friend Ramsey Su just asked what Haruhiko Kuroda and Shinzo Abe are going to do now in light of the strong yen (aside from perhaps doing the\u00a0honorable thing<\/a>). Isn\u2019t it time to just\u00a0\u201cwipe out some debt with the stroke of a pen\u201d<\/em>?<\/p>\n

\"SamuaraiThe modern\u00a0Samurai futon<\/em>!<\/p>\n

We will return to that question further below, but first a few words on the new Samurai futon. Apparently the Japanese are becoming more than a little antsy about Kuroda-san\u2019s negative interest rate policy (and the threats of more of the same coming down the pike). Bloomberg informs us of the latest developments in this saga: \u201cManga Worker Stuffs Cash in Futon to Flee Japan\u2019s Negative Rates<\/a>\u201d:<\/p>\n

When the Bank of Japan unexpectedly announced negative interest-rate\u00a0policies\u00a0in January, the first thing Tomomi Sato did was withdraw a 10th of the money in her bank account and stash it at home.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt made me think of bank runs and shutdowns like I\u2019ve heard there were in the past,\u201d said the 30-something assistant to manga comic artists, who commutes for two hours from a small apartment in Tokyo\u2019s suburbs.\u00a0\u201cEventually, I feel like they\u2019ll start charging me to keep my money there. When I think about that, I begin to worry.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Sato is emblematic of a challenge facing the central bank that rates below zero only deepened:\u00a0average Japanese aren\u2019t feeling the benefits of more than three years of extraordinary monetary stimulus, and cash withdrawals suggest they are losing faith.<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0About 40 trillion yen ($360 billion) has piled up in homes across Japan<\/em><\/strong>, according to a Dai-ichi Life Research Institute estimate \u2014 equivalent to about 8 percent of gross domestic product.\u00a0That\u2019s money banks could be lending on or using to buy bonds.\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(emphasis added)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Turning Stones Into Bread \u2013 The Japanese Miracle\u00a0 Stuffing the Futon Our friend Ramsey Su just asked what Haruhiko Kuroda and Shinzo Abe are going to do now in light of the strong yen (aside from perhaps doing the\u00a0honorable thing). Isn\u2019t it time to just\u00a0\u201cwipe out some debt with the stroke of a pen\u201d? The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1265,5728,83,1035,2854,452,1768,1389,6170,2189],"class_list":["post-20859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-abenomics","tag-acting-man","tag-bloomberg","tag-cash","tag-haruhiko-kuroda","tag-japan","tag-negative-interest-rate-policy","tag-nirp","tag-pater-tenebrarum","tag-shinzo-abe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20859"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20860,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20859\/revisions\/20860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}