{"id":28582,"date":"2017-12-05T08:13:30","date_gmt":"2017-12-05T13:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28582"},"modified":"2017-12-05T08:13:30","modified_gmt":"2017-12-05T13:13:30","slug":"bank-of-japan-tapers-quietly-qe-party-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=28582","title":{"rendered":"Bank of Japan Tapers (Quietly), QE Party Over"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2017\/12\/04\/bank-of-japan-is-tapering-quietly-qe-party-over\/\">Bank of Japan Tapers (Quietly), QE Party Over<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><strong>No flashy announcement,\u00a0to avoid alarming the markets.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>After years of blistering asset purchases, the Bank of Japan <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boj.or.jp.\/en\/statistics\/boj\/other\/acmai\/release\/2017\/ac171130.htm\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">disclosed<\/a> today that it held a total of \u00a5521.6 trillion in assets as of November 30, including Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs), gold, corporate bonds, Japanese REITs, equity ETFs, loans, etc. That is quite a pile, so to speak. It amounts to about 96% of Japan\u2019s GDP.<\/p>\n<p>By this measure, the BOJ\u2019s balance sheet dwarfs the Fed\u2019s balance sheet, which amounts to 23% of US GDP. When it comes to QE, no one can hold a candle to Japan.\u00a0Its holdings of JGBs alone rose to \u00a5443.6 trillion. Its balance sheet looks like a typical post-Financial-Crisis central-bank balance sheet on steroids (chart in trillion yen):<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-37296\" src=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Japan-BOJ-assets-2017-11.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"464\" height=\"406\" \/><\/p>\n<p>There a couple of differences compared to other central banks: One, the BOJ started QE long before anyone even called it \u201cQE,\u201d but in 2013, it really got going, and those giant moves made the prior periods of QE look minuscule. And two, the BOJ actually unwound some of its earlier QE starting in late 2005 but soon gave up on it.<\/p>\n<p>Now something else has been happening: Starting in December 2016 \u2013 the month the Fed raised rates and a few months after some Fed governors started to kick around the idea publicly that QE should be unwound \u2013 the BOJ began to curtail its asset purchases.<\/p>\n<p>In other words, it began to \u201ctaper.\u201d Assets are still increasing but at a much slower rate. During peak QE \u2013 the 12-month period ending December 31, 2016 \u2013 it added \u00a593.4 trillion (about $830 billion) to its balance sheet. Over the 12-month period ending November 30, 2017, it has added \u201conly\u201d \u00a550.8 trillion to its balance sheet. Though that\u2019s still a good chunk of money (about $450 billion), that addition is down 46%.<\/p>\n<p>This chart shows the 12-month change in the balance sheet in trillion yen, going back to the Financial Crisis:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-37297\" src=\"https:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Japan-BOJ-assets-2017-11-change-yen.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"458\" height=\"390\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bank of Japan Tapers (Quietly), QE Party Over No flashy announcement,\u00a0to avoid alarming the markets. After years of blistering asset purchases, the Bank of Japan disclosed today that it held a total of \u00a5521.6 trillion in assets as of November 30, including Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs), gold, corporate bonds, Japanese REITs, equity ETFs, loans, etc. [&hellip;]<\/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":[57,85,662,8625,4254,4255],"class_list":["post-28582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-bank-of-japan","tag-boj","tag-quantitative-easing","tag-quantitative-tightening","tag-wolf-richter","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28582","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=28582"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28583,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28582\/revisions\/28583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}