Japanese Policy Failure Means Disaster For Us All

Forced out of their mysterious anonymity and highly technical orientation, central banks have been dramatically thrust into the limelight as they have become single-handedly responsible for the fate of the global economy. Responding to one emergency after the other, they have set aside their conventional approaches and instead evolved into serial policy experimenters.

Often, and very counter-intuitively for such tradition-obsessed institutions, they have been forced to make things up on the spot. Repeatedly, they have been compelled to resort to untested policy instruments. And, with their expectations for better outcomes often disappointed, many have felt (and still feel) the need to venture ever deeper into unknown and unfamiliar policy terrains and roles. For those accustomed to the conventional operation of economies and financial systems, all this constitutes nothing less than an unthinkable transfiguration for central banks. Yet the structural breaks have not stopped there. What central banks have been experiencing is part of a significantly broader change whose effects will be felt by all of us, our children, and, most likely, their children, too. It is a change that speaks to much bigger and consequential evolutions in the global economy, in the functioning of markets, and in the financial landscape. And the implications go well beyond economics and finance, extending also to national politics, regional and global negotiations, and geopolitics.

Japanese Policy Failure Means Disaster For Us All