Following a six hour nine minute meeting over June 13 and 14, the Policy Board Kept the same ultra low target range for overnight money by unanimous vote. Created a parallel JPY 5 trillion credit line for equity investments to further encourage financial institutions to meet credit demands. The size of the facility is modest, [...]

Stocks recovered as China’s monthly data were near expectations and did not point to excessive slowdown.  Equities advanced 1.5% in China, 1.9% in Thailand, 1.4% in South Korea, and 1.1% in Japan.  European stocks followed Asia’s upbeat cue in spite of ongoing concerns about Greece.  S&P downgraded the Greek sovereign debt rating by three steps [...]

A two-day Policy Board meeting on Monday-Tuesday is not expected to modify the Bank of Japan’s target overnight money target range of around zero to 0.1% or the JPY 40 asset purchase ceiling.  At the May meeting on May 19-20, there was a unanimous decision to leave policy steady, and policymaker Nishimura dropped a previous [...]