Time to explore using 'fiscal space' to stimulate economies

Tokyo

IT MAY be premature to suggest that the world is turning its back on monetary policy as a means of spurring economic growth and defeating deflation, but it is true that fiscal stimulus is being looked at with renewed interest as a potential means of overcoming such problems.

This is partly because central bank monetary easing has taken us into some strange places: into the realm of negative interest rates where you pay a bank to accept your deposit rather than vice versa, and into an arena where currency wars threaten and financial markets oscillate