By MEGUMI FUJIKAWA And TATSUO ITO
TOKYO—The Bank of Japan took surprisingly strong steps to further ease its monetary policy on Wednesday, following similar steps by the Federal Reserve, as it tries to tackle entrenched deflation, an export-sapping strong yen and the impact of slowing global growth.
The central bank’s policy board decided at the end of a two-day meeting to increase the size of its asset-purchase program—the main tool for monetary easing with near-zero interest rates—to ¥80 trillion ($1.01 trillion) from ¥70 trillion.
via Japan Eases Monetary Policy in Surprise Move – WSJ.com.
Competitive devaluations, started by the ECB and followed by the Fed, PBOC and BOJ. Let the fun begin!