The damage caused by the recent earthquake has been much larger than that of the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995, but the Bank has taken full advantage of the lessons learned at the time. The first funds-supplying operation to support financial institutions in disaster areas took place in May, and the second such operation took place on June 21.
But I would certainly agree that the monetary policy decisions of other central banks are a significant factor to be taken into account in our monetary policy deliberations.15 Another way of stating this is that we don’t have the independence to set the neutral rate, which is significantly influenced by global forces, but we do have the independence as to where we set our policy rate relative to the neutral rate.