Bank of Japan's Non-Action Tanks Global Financial Markets

Despite their talk of "global" this and that, "international" this and that, the Abe administration and Kuroda BOJ remain extremely domestic. On top of that, they don't actually have "Plan B" for their respective policies - so-called "Abenomics" for Abe, "Quantitative Easing on a different dimension [as in "Twilight Zone"]" for Kuroda.

Their mode of operation is to keep doing it until it works. Nothing new in Japan, of all places.

Abe's so-called "growth strategy" for the nation of Japan is full of words like "Japan as the number one in the world". Kuroda was supposedly elected as Governor of Bank of Japan because of his supposedly excellent skills in communicating with the participants in the global financial markets.

However, when Bank of Japan commissioners met on June 11, despite the global turmoil in financial markets, particularly the bond markets including their own, caused by their clumsy implementation of endless bond buying, they decided to put a brave face and pretend nothing was amiss. They did nothing, which was not at all what the global financial markets were anticipating.

In driving, the worst and the most dangerous driver is the one who is unpredictable.

From AP (6/11/2013):

Japanese disappointment weighs on global markets

LONDON (AP) — Disappointment that the Bank of Japan did not unveil more measures to boost the economy as well as uncertainty over the course of U.S. monetary policy weighed hard on global markets Tuesday.

There had been expectations that the Bank of Japan, which started a big monetary stimulus this year to get the world's number 3 economy out of a two-decade stagnation, would announce new measures to ease volatility in the Japanese bond market. Instead the bank's policy board merely upgraded its economic assessment.

The disappointment was enough to send Japan's Nikkei stock index down 1.5 percent to close at 13,317.62. However, the retreat was modest in light of the previous day's 4.9 percent advance following an upward revision of first-quarter economic data. In tandem with the fall in equities, the yen made big gains — the dollar was down 2 percent to 96.87 yen.

"The decision to hold steady prompted a sharp jump in the yen, and is also one factor contributing to weakness in global equities," said Nick Bennenbroek, head of currency strategy at Wells Fargo Bank.

In Europe, the FTSE 100 index of leading British shares was down 1.6 percent at 6,298 while Germany's DAX fell 1.7 percent to 8,165. The CAC-40 in France was 1.8 percent lower at 3,793.

In the U.S., the Dow Jones industrial average was down 0.8 percent at 15,114 while the broader S&P 500 index fell 0.9 percent to 1,628.

(Full article at the link)

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