When something goes wrong, the New York businessman gets angry.

Old-Guard Japan
By Stephen Roach | New York

In a stunning blow to central bank independence, the Bank of Japan seriously bumbled its January 18 policy decision. After setting up the markets for the second installment of a “normalization-focused” monetary tightening, the BOJ buckled under political pressure and passed—electing, instead, to keep its policy rate unchanged at 0.25%. While this may end up being nothing more than a painful detour on the road to normalization, the incident speaks volumes about the Old Guard political dominance of Japan’s deeply entrenched LDP ruling party. It is a major credibility blow, with potentially lasting damage to the New-Economy image of a revitalized post-deflation Japanese economy.

But the Tokyo businessman says he’s sorry.

Our Apologies for Erring
By Takehiro Sato | Japan

To date, we had steadfastly maintained our view for an additional rate hike in January. The result, however, was a postponement. We would like to first apologize sincerely to all our readers for having misread the timing of the rate hike.

(Both quotes taken from the always-excellent Morgan Stanley Global Economic Forum)

This entry was posted on Friday, January 19th, 2007 at 9:38 pm and is filed under Cliches, Econ & Business, Japan, New York. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.