If one were to look up the definition of hypocrisy, the image of BoJ head Kuroda should be front-and-center. Having tripled-down on his money-printing and ETF-buying largesse just last week, he came out swinging last night at the government's fiscal irresponsibility blasting Abe's policies by saying Japan's fiscal health "is the responsibility of parliament and the government, not an issue for the central bank to be held responsible for." Aside from the fact that he is directly monetizing all JGB issuance - thus enabling Abe's arrogant fiscal stimulus plan (by issuing 30Y and 40Y debt), Bloomberg notes [5] that "Kuroda is making it crystal clear the government has to tackle the debt problem and if fiscal trust is lost that’s not going to be on the BOJ." The world has truly gone mad.
Seemingly paying the same lip-service as Bernanke and Yellen in the US and Draghi in Europe, BoJ's Haruhiko Kuroda is carefully positioning the blame for lack of growth and economic chaos on the government's lack of growth-oriented policies... and not the central bank's enabling experiments... (via Bloomberg) [5]
Bank of Japan chief Haruhiko Kuroda emphasized the onus is on the government to strengthen its finances after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe postponed a sales-tax hike and outlined plans to boost fiscal stimulus.
“It’s the responsibility of parliament and the government, not an issue for the central bank to be held responsible for,” Kuroda said when asked about risks to Japan’s fiscal health. The BOJ’s job is to achieve its inflation target, he said at a press conference in Tokyo.
Kuroda’s repeated comments at a press conference today on the importance of fiscal discipline indicate the governor is unhappy and may signal a change in strategy, said Credit Suisse Group AG economist Hiromichi Shirakawa.
...
“Kuroda is making it crystal clear the government has to tackle the debt problem and if fiscal trust is lost that’s not going to be on the BOJ,” said Shirakawa, a former BOJ official. “This is true, but he used to highlight that the BOJ and the government were working together. Abe might have created an enemy by postponing the sales-tax hike.”
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So when Japan finally goes entirely tits-up, we now know, it was all Abe's fault... and nothing to do with reckless money-printing and leveraged buying of the nation's stocks by a maniacal central banker...
Is this not the same as a price-cutting drug dealer blaming the drug-addicted customer for not being able to afford better drugs?
