Japan Ends Long History of Negative Interest Rates

For the first time in 17 years, Japan is hiking short-term rates from negative to positive. Japan has been battling deflation and economic stagflation since the worldwide economic crisis and was the lone hold-out among several countries experimenting with negative rates. This last week, that experiment ended with a rate hike from negative  .1% to between zero and positive .1%.

 

The Japanese economy has been suffering through a very long period of stagflation. This has been going on since the late 1990’s but the decision to lower short-term rates happened sometime after the 2007 to 2009 economic crisis with Denmark being the first country to do so. The European Union followed suit in 2014, and then Japan did so in 2016. Sweden and Switzerland were also among the countries dipping into negative territory.

 

In the US, the Federal Reserve kept rates very close to zero from late 2008 to 2015, and when Covid hit, the rates went back down from March 2020 to March 2022, but we never joined the negative interest rate experiment. For Japan, the short-term rate has remained at the -.1% since it was first implemented in 2016. Oddly enough, both Japan and the US have their sites set on a 2% target, but Japan is trying to boost prices to get there while the US is trying to reduce them...

 

...You can read more by following links in the show notes at newsforinvestors.com  And please join our network of real estate investors by signing up for a free membership at out website. And please subscribe to this podcast so you won’t miss an episode. 

 

Thanks for listening!

Kathy

 

Links:

 

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/18/business/japan-boj-negative-interest-rate-ended-intl-hnk/index.html#:~:text=As%20part%20of%20the%20decision,stagnation%20since%20the%20late%201990s.

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/19/bank-of-japan-boj-march-2024-policy-decision-mpm-meeting.html

 

https://www.morningstar.com/news/marketwatch/20240319112/negative-interest-rate-era-is-over-was-it-the-dumbest-idea-in-economic-history