On February 5, BOJ Governor Masaaki Shirakawa announced that he will step down on March 19, three weeks early. Shirakawa's departure accelerates a BOJ (Bank of Japan) leadership transition that will support the push for more aggressive monetary easing by Japan's new Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe. Shirakawa's early exit coincides with the scheduled departures of the BOJ's two Deputy Governors. The message is clear. With new leadership under three new members of its nine-member governing board, BOJ will be serious about printing more money, a lot of it, to buy domestic and foreign bonds in order to achieve the two percent ... (full story)