by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
“Negative interest expense” or some such absurdity yet to be coined.
“For now, the effect of negative interest rates is very strong, so we’d like to steadily proceed with this policy,” Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda told parliament today, to reassure the nervous politicians that the economy was on the right track under his fearless and wise leadership.
Alas, the BOJ’s “tankan” survey, released on Friday, showed that confidence plunged among manufacturers to the lowest point since 2013, while inflation expectations weakened further.