Li Jinliang: The negative interest rate becomes the past and present of the Japanese s

Source: Hong Kong Zhongtong News Agency

Author: Li Jinliang

At the Monetary Policy Conference on the 19th, the Bank of Japan decided to lift the negative interest rate policy as the core of large -scale currency easing policies. The short -term interest rate will be raised from the original negative 0.1%to 0 to 0.1%, which is the first to raise interest rates in 17 years.As the last major economy in the world to end negative interest rates, this means that negative interest rate policy has officially become history.

In the 1990s, the Japanese bubble economic blasting caused a sharp decline in asset prices. In the next ten years, Japan has shrunk and economic recession, and it has fallen into the dilemma of "lost ten years".The Bank of Japan began to implement zero interest rates and quantitative loose as early as 2001 to revitalize the economy.

Under the long -term "zero interest", the yen not only has no weakness, but has shown strongly since 2007. The US dollar against the yen from 125 and repeatedly rose to the 75 level in 2011.

It is worth mentioning that at the time of the global financial tsunami in 2008, the quantitative easing (QE) policy launched by the United States was actually invented by the Bank of Japan.Since then, major central banks around the world have launched or have been quantitatively loose, and have entered a low -interest environment for more than ten years.

Driven by the former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "Abe Economics", Japan has implemented a more radical easing policy. Since 2013, the Bank of Japan has implemented quality and quantitative easing policy (QQE), and further increased in 2016To implement negative interest rate policies, implement negative 0.1%interest rates for financial institutions' regular account balances in the central bank, and introduce the Breathing curve control (YCC) framework to maintain the target level of 10 -year Treasury bonds at zero.

However, Japan's radical loose monetary policy has not brought great improvement to the economy and inflation. Instead, investors can earn interest spreads through borrowing low interest rate yen to buy high -yield assets overseas.

Due to the weakening of the yen due to the outflow of funds, the US dollar against the yen rebounded from a low level from 2021 to 100 to 110 levels, and maintained for a period of time.When risk incidents in the market, the yen often becomes a "passive" asset of hedging, and the return of funds to stimulates the yen rebound.

Until the crown disease, the global supply chain is interrupted, and the European and American central banks have been radical to respond to inflation pressure since 2022. Only the Bank of Japan continued to maintain a super loose policy and became the only central bank in the world to implement negative interest rate policies.Expand a new round of depreciation.

The European Central Bank also adopted a negative interest rate policy due to the tightening of the currency in the 2010s. HoweverThe era of negative interest rates.

As the inflation of imports slowly transmitted to the real economy, Japan has begun to get rid of shrinkage in recent years. In January this year, the core consumption price index (CPI) rose by 2%year -on -year.The 2%goal set by the central bank.As for the key indicators of the Bank of Japan's decision to end the negative interest rate, the results of the "Spring Dou" of the Spring Sales negotiations of Japan last Friday show that the average annual salary of Japanese employees increased by 5.28%, the highest since 1992.Due to the high salary increase than inflation, family expenses are expected to expand, and the central bank's expectations of sustainable benign inflation targets.

Zhuang Taiguang, an associate professor of the Department of Economics of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, analyzed the Hong Kong Sino -Tong News Agency on the 19th.big.Because the Bank of Japan had half a year, he was expected to have a large move in the next month.The long -term trend of the Japanese yen is to look at Japan's interest rate hikes on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is to see the US interest rate reduction. As the interest difference narrows, the yen will rise in the long run.