The BOJ "Has Made Up Its Mind To Hike Rates" After Union Wage Negotations Lead To Surge In Pay

After a decade of NIRP and unlimited bond buying to keep the Japanese bond market - and economy - from disintegrating, the BOJ may have no choice but to hike rates as soon as next week. The reason: inflation in "deflationary" Japan is now not only on par with the US, but wage growth is surging and threatening to spark a wage-price spiral even as the clueless, cartoonish central bank is keeping rates negative, buying bonds and stocks to prop up the market, and generally doing everything in its power to unleash hyperinflation and currency collapse.

So with all attention on the Japanese labor union wage requests, overnight companies including Toyota, Honda, Nippon Steel and ANA Holdings all granted workers their biggest pay rise in more than three decades, underlining the inflationary trend and bolstering the case for the Bank of Japan to begin raising interest rates. Indeed, with the peak day arriving today for major companies to respond to union wage hike increases, media outlets have reported that most companies had already agreed to the full amount or more than labor unions wage hike requests without waiting for the March 13 deadline.