Japan ? like many countries across the globe ? is weighed down by structural problems that systematically hinder recovery, growth, inflation, and confidence.
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Photo by Jezael Melgoza on Unsplash

This is an opinion piece by Michel Santi.

Japan is the world?s laboratory. It?s in this country that in 2001, for the very first time, the famous quantitative easing measures were put in place that tried to break the believed-to-be impenetrable barrier of zero interest rates that had been set in 1999. It was a revolutionary endeavour for the time, led by successive governments motivated by the need to revive their economy. This staunchly unorthodox monetary policy now became common practice for Western central banks. The Fed, the ECB, the Bank of England and others haven?t been miserly in making use of this inverted lever whose clear and open objective was to rekindle inflationary pressures. This precious reflation would of course not come without public spending that would in turn stimulate the recovery of consumption and private investment. To rehash the very profound words of Paul Krugman, central banks ? for the class of them that the Bank of Japan pioneered ? signalled to the public that if necessary they would be prepared to lose control of inflation.
Photo by Jezael Melgoza on Unsplash

However, 20 years on and Japan is still stuck in its stagnation, still debating with itself in a soup made of anaemic grow...