TOKYO, May 11, 2022—Japan’s mini-Trump, Shinzo Abe, May 10 did it again for his aspirations to return to the Prime Minister’s seat.
The former prime minister who quit his post last year amid investigations for his financial irregularities told a May 10 meeting: ‘The Bank of Japan holds more than half of 1,000 trillion yen ($10 trillion government debt). BOJ is a government subsidiary, so when (the debt) comes due, it can roll over by borrowing again. So don’t worry about the debt.’
While Abe was the prime minister, Japanese government debts swelled to nearly 1,000 trillion yen under his ‘Abenomicks,’ and recently, it topped the level for the first time ever, making Japan the most indebted government in the world.
His remarks are the execution of the modern monetary theory – which means the government can borrow, or print money, as much as it needs instead of tax revenue constraints.
Abe wants to make a stab at regaining the PM seat by scoring his Liberal Democratic Party victory
in this summer House of Councilors election while booting the current PM Fumio Kishida in a political horse-trading game. If that happens, while not likely at this time, the Japanese government would pressure BOJ buy more Japanese government bonds from the Ministry of Finance while being forced to keep short-term interest rates effectively zero, the policy that the BOJ under its governor Haruhiko Kuroda, a former MoF bureaucrat, maintains in conniving with and paying respects to the MoF’s treasury department.
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