by Jeffrey P. Snider
Alhambra Partners
Nominal disposable income in Japan fell 4.4% year-over-year in May 2016. In what can only be a sign of the times being far too familiar in Japanese, real disposable income was thus slightly better at “only” -3.9%. For all the hundreds of trillions in new Japanese bank reserves provided by so many QE’s I have lost count, “real” in Japan means better than nominal since the CPI is negative yet again. For the month of May, the overall CPI was -0.38% less than May 2015; excluding imputed rent, the CPI was -0.48% below the same month a year earlier.