TOKYO -- Over the past few months, the Bank of Japan has been grappling with an increasingly impossible task: fighting deflation and inflation simultaneously.
The country's long-term deflationary trend is a legacy of the economic stagnation that started in the 1990s, when falling prices began to sap demand and growth. Since 2016, policymakers have been trying to support prices by holding interest rates below zero -- pumping cheap credit into the economy to boost economic activity. The BOJ's target is to achieve "sustained" inflation of 2%.
.jpg?width=178&fit=cover&gravity=faces&dpr=2&quality=medium&source=nar-cms&format=auto&height=100)
