BOJ Kuroda’s Magical Thinking on 2% Inflation Target Gets Real

01-Nov (Bloomberg) — You could say Peter Pan is growing up.

Japan’s most determined central bank governor in the modern era, Haruhiko Kuroda, once described the task of fostering inflation as somewhat like Peter Pan’s efforts to fly — the moment you doubt yourself, you can no longer do it.

On Tuesday, the Bank of Japan’s inflation outlook came hurtling back toward Earth.

Kuroda and his fellow board members, who in 2013 forecast reaching their 2 percent target for consumer-price gains within a couple years, are now projecting this happening as late as spring of 2019.

This puts the goal beyond Kuroda’s term as governor, which ends in April 2018. It also means fulfilling the pledge to overshoot that target looks even more distant.

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