Bloomberg (June 8)
“It’s not like inflation is out of control in Japan. Far from it. Consumer prices rose 2.1% in April from a year earlier, finally reaching the BOJ’s target.” Nevertheless, “after a generation of ultra-low prices, Kuroda may not have appreciated how hard it is for Japanese to embrace something they haven’t had to deal with.” In April, fresh fish and vegetables rose by 12%, “including a nearly 100% increase in the cost of onions. Talk about eye watering.” The BOJ has worked for nearly three decades “to crank up inflation from dangerously low levels. How galling that Japan may not even want it.”
Tags: BOJ, Consumer prices, Dangerously low, Eye watering, Fish, Galling, Inflation, Japan, Kuroda, Onions, Vegetables
New Yorker (July 17)
“Trump’s penchant for bald deception and incoherence is not an aberration. It is his daily practice. The vague sense of torpor and gloom that so many Americans have shouldered these past two years derives precisely from the constancy of Trump’s galling statements and actions.” Despite this numbing influence, “what happened in Helsinki on Monday will not be so easily forgotten.” The President’s disgraceful “performances in Europe, and now in Washington,” as he tries to walk things back, “clarified nothing. They only raised dark suspicions and aroused the sickening feeling that we are living in the pages of the most lurid espionage novel ever written.”
Tags: Deception, Disgraceful, Espionage, Forgotten, Galling, Helsinki, Incoherence, Lurid, Numbing, Sickening, Suspicions, Trump
