Increasing the outright purchase of long-term government bonds The Bank will increase its outright purchase of long-term government bonds from the current one trillion yen per month to 1.2 trillion yen per month.
Consequently, the amount outstanding of the Bank's JGB holdings is expected to more than double in two years, from 89 trillion yen at end-2012 to 190 trillion yen at end-2014.
To consider the effects from altering the composition of the BOJ's balance sheet by increasing purchases of long-term JGBs, this paper divides these effects into the portfolio rebalancing effect and the signaling effect for expectations regarding the future path of short-term interest rates.
The Bank has a policy of limiting its holdings of long-term government bonds to the outstanding amount of banknotes issued. The Federal Reserve and the BOE have similar views on purchases of government bonds..
As a result of this, the average remaining maturity of the Bank's JGB purchases has been more than doubled, extending from slightly less than three years to about seven years.
Meanwhile, with the releases of weak economic indicators, long-term government bond yields have fluctuated in a historically low range and stock prices have been declining since the end of March.
The Bank will keep the outstanding amount of long-term government bonds effectively held by the Bank(i.e., the amount after taking account of the government bond sales under gensaki repurchase agreements) below the outstanding balance of banknotes issued.
To achieve this target, the amount outstanding of JGB holdings will be increased from an annual pace of about 50 trillion yen to about 80 trillion yen an addition of about 30 trillion yen.
Long-term government bond yields have been on a declining trend since the beginning of February reflecting weak economic indicators, although with some fluctuations caused by market anticipation of an additional economic package.
The Bank of Japan has been conducting the purchase of long-term government bonds for nearly fifty years. In that respect, purchasing long-term government bonds is one of the"conventional monetary policy" measures.
Meanwhile, even if the paces of increase in the monetary base and in the amount outstanding of the Bank's JGB holdings were to be reduced, accommodative financial conditions would be strengthened in a cumulative manner as the amount outstanding of its asset holdings increases.
Meanwhile, with releases of weak economic indicators, long-term government bond yields fluctuated in a historically low range and stock prices declined from the end of March.
In addition, if considered necessary for the smooth provision of liquidity, the Bank will increase its outright purchase of long-term government bonds from the previous 400 billion yen per month subject to certain conditions.
When we attempt to assess the market conditions regarding safe assets in the U.S. financial system, the rise and fall of the"yield spread," which is the difference between the stock yield and long-term government bond yield, is quite illuminating Chart 8.
The outstanding amount of the JGBs held by the Bank has increased from about 66 trillion yen at the end of 2011 to about 84 trillion yen at present, coming to exceed the outstanding amount of banknotes issued.
Yields on long-term government bonds have been on a downward trend since mid-October, having decreased to around 1.55 percent temporarily, and are recently moving around 1.65 percent.
Yields on long-term government bonds have been declining gradually partly because investors bought medium- and long-term bonds on dips, and are recently moving at around 0.9 percent.
Yields on long-term government bonds declined from late August to the level of around 1.6 percent. They rose somewhat thereafter and have recently been moving between 1.7 and 1.8 percent.
As I have just explained, unconventional monetary policy of central banks involves the purchases of substantial amounts of long-term government bonds and/or risk assets.
The negative interest rate lowers short-term interest rates, while the massive purchases of long-term JGBs lower long-term yields. These two elements together exert strong downward pressure on interest rates across the entire yield curve.
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