Roger W Ferguson, Jr: Uncertain times - Economic challenges facing the United States and Japan Speech by Mr Roger W Ferguson, Jr, Vice-Chairman of the Board of Governors of the US Federal Reserve System, before the Institute of International Bankers, New York, 11 June 2003.
*  *  *  Despite heavy doses of monetary and fiscal stimulus, the Japanese economy remains mired in a mild, yet protracted, deflationary slump. The origins of the slump date to the bursting of the land and equity price bubble in the early 1990s. Economic weakness, in turn, has led to a sustained deflation that has proven unexpectedly difficult to cure.