Kuroda Delays End of QE for the Fifth Time in the Past Three Years

They are going, mind you, to control the yield curve. Unfortunately, none of Kuroda’s BOJ schemes have worked, thus far. As such, he’s delaying an end to their QE program for the fifth time over the past three years. Also, he’s promising even MOAR stimulus — because he’s an animal.

Governor Haruhiko Kuroda gave the clearest signal yet that the Bank of Japan may postpone the forecast date for achieving its 2 percent inflation target to 2018, even with economic growth set to accelerate next year.

“It may take slightly more months to reach the 2 percent inflation rate” than the current forecast to hit it in the coming fiscal year, Kuroda said in an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Francine Lacqua on the sidelines of an annual gathering of finance chiefs in Washington. “We have to carefully study all relevant statistics before we review the forecast. So we may change, we may not change.”

“We will continue or even strengthen our monetary easing in coming months and years to achieve 2 percent inflation,” Kuroda said in the interview recorded Saturday, during which he questioned the value of the idea of buying foreign bonds, and declined to specify whether the BOJ would sell Japanese government securities as part of its new yield-curve targeting policy.

This would be the fifth delay to the price target since Kuroda launched his stimulus campaign more than three years ago. Even so, “the economy is likely to accelerate,” Kuroda said. Expanded fiscal spending from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration will help get Japan’s economic growth rate to about 1.5 percent next year, from around 1 percent this year, he said.

While Kuroda said he’s confident the policy to control the yield curve will succeed, there may be times when rates miss the target. “I don’t say that we can completely control the 10-year interest rate,” he said. “But from our experience, we can basically influence and manage the long-term interest rate to be around zero percent.”

What does this mean for traders? Probably nothing. More of the same, constant and persistent rigging of markets — which end up going nowhere.