{"id":186639,"date":"2013-12-01T20:18:00","date_gmt":"2013-12-02T01:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/12\/01\/abenomics-is-working\/"},"modified":"2013-12-01T20:18:00","modified_gmt":"2013-12-02T01:18:00","slug":"abenomics-is-working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/12\/01\/abenomics-is-working\/","title":{"rendered":"Abenomics is Working"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If you believe, as I do, that much of the cause of the lost decade(s) in Japan is deflation\/disinflation, then the news of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-25134109\">consumer prices rising in Japan<\/a> is an unalloyed good:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Consumer prices in Japan rose at the fastest pace in five years in October, suggesting policymakers&#8217; attempts to end years of deflation are working.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Consumer prices, excluding food, rose 0.9% from a year earlier. Prices have now risen for five months in a row.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Japan has been battling deflation, or falling prices, for best part of the past 20 years.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">It is seen as a major drag on its economy and policymakers have unveiled a series of measures to end the cycle.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">While falling prices may sound good to those experiencing inflation, they hold back economic growth as consumers and businesses tend to put off purchases in the hope of getting a cheaper deal later on, which hurts domestic demand.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">Japan&#8217;s central bank has set a target of achieving an inflation rate of 2%.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I think that the central bank is being too timid.  I think that their target, at least over the next 2-5 years, should be more, somewhere between 4% and 6%, but the admittedly anemic 0.9% rate is better that what has been the trend for a <b>very<\/b> long time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you believe, as I do, that much of the cause of the lost decade(s) in Japan is deflation\/disinflation, then the news of consumer prices rising in Japan is an unalloyed good: Consumer prices in Japan rose at the fastest pace in five years in October, suggesting policymakers&#8217; attempts to end years of deflation are &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,1200,1188],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-inflation","category-japan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186639"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186639"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186639\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}