Is the US turning Japanese? The market really thinks so.
アメリカは日本的になりつつあるのだろうか? 市場は実際そう考えている。
A logical response to a huge - and largely unanticipated - easing in monetary policy, as happened last month, would be to increase expectations for inflation.
It should also damage the dollar, both because the interest rates on offer are less attractive for foreigners, and because increased risk of inflation makes it less attractive in the long run.
Instead, the dollar has held its ground and is barely changed for the year, while the market for inflation-linked bonds suggests inflation expectations have barely budged.
Whatever the Federal Reserve may think - as recently as three months ago it said the risks of rising inflation "roughly balanced" the downside risks to growth - the market thinks the risks are emphatically on the side of a slowdown.
But these market moves do seem to imply a fear of the "Japanese" scenario, when a slowdown is accompanied by deflation, such that rate cuts by the central bank no longer stimulate the economy. Instead of aping the US and Europe in the 1970s, the fear is that the US will repeat the Japanese experience of the 1990s.
Not all markets share this fear of deflation. The S&P GSCI non-energy commodities index is up 9.5 per cent for the year, so concerns for growth at a global level do not appear acute.
And the European Central Bank, which will close its monthly meeting on monetary policy today, is expected to leave rates on hold. It remains preoccupied by inflation.
The market may not agree. The dollar's resilience against the euro may well reflect a belief that the economies of Europe and the US are closely linked even if their central banks appear to have decoupled