HKS Affiliated Authors
Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System
Excerpt
Excerpt
The Easy Money Contagion. Carmen Reinhart, August 24, 2016, Opinion, "To consider the actions taken by the world’s major central banks in the past month is to invite an essential question: when – and where – will all this monetary easing end? At the end of July, the Bank of Japan announced that it would maintain its current negative interest rates and bond-buying program. At the same time, the BOJ pledged that it would nearly double its annual purchases of equity-traded funds, from ¥3.3 trillion ($32.9 billion) to ¥6 trillion. And yet the announcement of a monetary-policy package that in a different era would have been considered inconceivably accommodative, actually disappointed financial markets. To the chagrin of Japanese policymakers, the yen strengthened against major currencies." Link