
TOKYO -- The Bank of Japan continued to buck the global trend of monetary tightening to fight rising inflation, keeping its own policy ultraloose even as the yen nose-dives against the dollar.
"Raising interest rates or tightening monetary policy would add further downward pressure on a Japanese economy" that is still recovering from the COVID pandemic, BOJ Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda said in a press conference Friday after the monetary policy decision. "Such monetary policy steps would cool the economy and are therefore inappropriate."