SEVENTH time lucky? Minutes of the Bank of Japan’s (BoJ) policy meeting in July, published on September 26th, showed that the central bank had, for the sixth time since 2013, pushed back the date at which it expected prices to meet its 2% inflation target—to the fiscal year ending in March 2020.

第七次撞大运？据9月26日对外公布的日本银行七月政策会议纪要，它又一次将预期价格上涨达到2%通胀目标的时间推迟至2020年三月截止的财年。这是2013年以来第六次做出如此的预期。

Four-and-a-half years since Haruhiko Kuroda took office as governor and embarked on an unprecedented experiment in quantitative easing (QE), the bank is still far from its goal. It has swept up 40% of Japanese government bonds and a whopping 71% of exchange-traded funds. The bank’s balance-sheet has tripled. It is now roughly the size of the American Federal Reserve’s.

四年半前，黒田東彦担任日本央行行长，着手实行史上最大的量化宽松政策。可是，该行仍然远远无法实现制定的目标。日本银行大肆收购日本政府40%的国债，以及高达71%的交易型开放式指数基金（ETF)。该行的负债表扩大了三倍，现在几乎达到了美联储的规模。

Yet, despite his apparent failure, and despite a snap general election, Mr Kuroda may yet stay for another five years when his term runs out next April. If not, most of his likely successors are signed up to the same reflationary policy. At least one member of the bank’s board gave warning at its most recent policy meeting on September 20th-21st that the measures it has taken are insufficient to stoke the desired inflation. These include keeping short-term interest rates negative, at about -0.1%, and ten-year government-bond yields at around zero. Soon, however, debate might turn to the feasibility of the 2% target.

然而，尽管黑田没有达预定的目标，以及日本出现提前大选的情况，他仍然有可能会在明年四月任期结束后会接着再任干五年时间。否则，他的继任者基本上也是会制定同样的通胀政策。至少有一位日本银行委员会成员在9月20日至21日召开的最的一光华政策会议上提出警告，称日本央行采取的措施不足以实现预期的通胀。这些措施包括保持短期利率为负，大致在-0.1%；十年期政府债券收益率在零左右。不过，争论很快就变成了2%的通胀目标的可行性问题。

Many countries would be happy to have Japan’s problems, says Masamichi Adachi of JPMorgan Securities: full employment, soaring corporate profits and the third-longest economic expansion since the second world war. But with government reforms faltering, the BoJ’s role as custodian of “Abenomics” (the policies of the prime minister, Shinzo Abe), seems assured. A labour crunch may at last be working where government badgering of Japanese companies to pay workers more has failed. In a speech this week, Mr Kuroda pointed to rising wages as a reason to hope inflation will pick up. Firms, he said, have been absorbing the cost to keep prices low, but will not be able to do so for ever.

摩根大通证券的Masamichi Adachi表示，很多国家会很乐意自己的国家也有类似日本的“烦恼”：全民就业，企业利润大涨以及在二战后经济一直增长。不过，由于日本政府的改革踌躇不前，日本银行当起了“安倍经济学”（日本首相安倍晋三的经济政策）的守护神角色。劳动力危机至少 起到了作用，因为日本政府催促日本企业加薪的努力没有起效。在本周的讲话中，黑田再次提及要用加薪来推动通胀。他表示，企业一直在消化成本，压低产品价格，不过，这种作法不可能一直持续下去。

Not all share his optimism. Monetary easing is failing in one of its aims, says Sayuri Shirai, a former BoJ board member: to foster risk-taking corporate behaviour. Instead, the amount of cash hoarded by Japan’s companies has grown by about ¥50trn ($443bn) over the past five years and exceeds ¥210trn, a record.

他的这种乐观情绪没有得到所有人的认可。前日本银行委员会成员syuri Shiraig表示，宽松的货币政策的一个目标没有实现：促使日本企业采取冒险的经营行为。相反，在过去五年里，日本企业获取的大量现金增长了50万亿日元（合4430亿美元），总计超过了210万亿日本，创下了新纪录。

With sluggish investment and demand, Mr Kuroda’s monetary blitzkrieg will continue. The risk, says Ms Shirai, is that monetary policy has become a crutch for the entire economy. Leaning on the central bank, some companies are reducing efforts to boost productivity and improve governance, she says. And, by becoming the largest shareholder in several companies, the bank is distorting the pricing function of the market, adds Nicholas Benes, of the Board Director Training Institute of Japan.

由于投资与需求双双疲软，黑田的货币宽松政策仍然会持续下去。Shirai表示，这个政策存在风险，即货币政策成了整个日本经济的支撑。她指出，依靠日本央行的政策，一些日本企业不再努力提升生产力，也不改善企业经营。同时，日本培训研究所所长尼古拉斯·比尼斯（Nicolas Benes）还表示，由于日本银行成为多家日本企业的控股股东，它正在影响市场定价机制。

Mr Kuroda stunned the markets with QE in 2013 and has continued to surprise since with a string of policy innovations. But nobody, says Mr Adachi, can see when the BoJ will start to reduce its asset purchases, let alone trim its balance-sheet. Perhaps never. For all the problems its easy-money policy brings, many think it more costly to ditch it than to keep on digging.

在2013年，黑田的量化宽松政策让市场大感意外 ，接二连三的政策改革不断令人震惊。Adachi称，不过，没有人明白日本银行何时会减少其资产购入数量，更不用说收缩其资产负债表了。对于宽松的货币政策所带来的问题，有人认为填坑的成本远远超过了挖坑的成本。

编辑：翻吧君

来源：经济学人