With Tuesday’s truly shocking announcement that the Federal Reserve would let its central Fed Funds rate drop to zero, the US has officially turned Japanese. For the first time since 1993, the Fed’s rates are lower than those of the Bank of Japan (currently at 0.3 per cent).

Japan’s rates, which were zero for years, went so low as part of the country’s long and painful war on deflation. The Fed made clear that it also expects to be in the trenches battling deflation for a long time. It also intends to use other weapons from the BoJ arsenal, including buying Treasury bonds to reduce yields that are already at half-century lows, in an attempt to jolt life into the economy.