The BOJ Gets a New Doctrine. It Just Ain't Telling

With few exceptions, the most prominent central banks have retired from the business of providing detailed projections of where interest rates are headed. The costs of being wrong in an era of worrisome inflation were too great. Japan is trying something new: forward misguidance.

Unsettling surprises are a feature of the choices the Bank of Japan has made over the past decade, rather than a bug. Dismantling ultra-loose money and the paraphernalia that has supported it means that communications accidents like the one that rocked global markets recently are bound to happen. If they were, indeed, an accident.