It was six months ago when members of the Bank of Japan’s policy board first sank their teeth into forbidden fruit. Ignoring pleas from politicians, they did what no Japanese central banker had been able to do in a very long time: they raised interest rates.
Since that delicious moment, many of the members have been dying to taste the succulent fruit again. Institutionally, the bank wants to return to something like a normal interest rate environment. An overnight call rate of 0.25 per cent simply does not cut it. But events have not gone its way.
