, Columnist
The Growing Comprehension Gap That Isolates Japan
The central bank governor and the market are talking at cross-purposes. It shows a country that’s both badly understood and a poor communicator.
Miscommunication.
Photographer: Ting Shen/BloombergThe Bank of Japan did exactly what it said it would do: nothing. Yet traders were stunned.
The market churn after the Jan. 18 decision to keep policy unchanged, something expected by almost every economist surveyed, might seem a little odd. Blindsided in December by Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s yield-curve control tweak, some observers had begun talking themselves into believing that not just further adjustments were possible, but that he was set to wholesale dismantle his decade-long easing program.