Japan must re-focus on its own companies

Campaigning for Japan’s snap election will begin this week. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s decision to seek a new mandate from voters, whatever the reasoning, does at least give his reformed government a welcome opportunity to recalibrate the focus of Abenomics to achieve some of the promised outcomes. Having faced down the Finance Ministry to defer until 2017 a controversial second-stage rise in the consumption tax to 10% from 8%, originally planned for next October, Abe would be well advised to rein in the government’s own encouragement of the Bank of Japan’s quantitative and qualitative easing policy, and to take his reform battle to Japan’s cash-rich companies….“more:”