Despite having the lowest overnight rate of the Group of Seven nations, Japan’s central bank unanimously voted today (Friday) to keep its key interest rate steady at 0.5%.

The Japanese economy is steadily growing and may have finally “decoupled” from the US, according to a report in The Guardian:

Senior officials say the economy has become much more stable as it has plugged into the booming economies of Asia, exporting everything from consumer goods to machine tools. But not everyone is convinced, with some worried that as Asia slows in response to lower exports to a recession-hit US, Japan’s exports will suffer, as will its consumers, whose spending will be hit by higher fuel prices.

“Japan is cheap in a way that no other developed markets are,” says Merryn Somerset Webb in Money Week.

Japanese stocks have risen on news that US orders for durable goods rose in April. This from Bloomberg:

Sony Corp., which gets a quarter of its sales from the U.S., sent electronics makers higher, while Canon Inc. jumped the most in a month. Mazda Motor Corp., which exports 80 percent of domestic production, led a gain by carmakers after the yen weakened against the dollar.

Continue Reading

At the launch party for the Spectator’s business magazine, a banker introduced himself to me. He’d been wanting to meet me for ages, he said.

A stalling U.S. economy has typically been a cause for a concern among Asian exporters, which have traditionally been over-reliant on the American consumer for business.