Press Conference by Taro Aso, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Finance, and Minister of State for Financial Services

(Excerpt)

(Friday, September 18, 2015, 9:57 am to 10:11 am)

[Questions and answers:]

Q.

On September 16, the U.S. rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded Japanese government bonds by one notch from AA- to A+. Minister, please tell me what you think of this.

A.

I remember when a private rating agency rated Japanese government bonds as lower than those of Botswana. What year was that?

Q.

It was 2002.

A.

In that year, Mr. Kuroda, the current Bank of Japan Governor, issued an opinion paper. I thought his English was really good, but anyway, with Standard & Poor’s having downgraded us from AA- to A+, how much have the yields on Japanese government bonds increased by?

Q.

They’ve actually gone down.

A.

Which means, I think, that this isn’t really an issue. Ratings have become uninfluential. Normally, you’d expect yields to rise. When the rating is downgraded, the yield rises. So what does this mean? Does it mean that the market does not react to actions by rating agencies? So I’m not going to comment on each and every action taken by them.