U.S. equity prices edged off record highs on Wednesday led by weakness in the financial sector after six global banks were fined a total of $4.3 billion for currency rigging, while the oil market sagged on concerns about a supply glut.
Shinzo Abe
Asian shares slipped slightly on Thursday as investors looked to a run of Chinese economic indicators due later in the day, while Wall Street shares ended a five-day winning streak as falling oil prices hurt energy stocks.
Japanese stocks scaled seven-year highs on Wednesday on growing expectations Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will postpone a planned sales tax hike to avoid damaging a fragile recovery, and call a snap election to bolster his political standing.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will postpone a planned tax increase and call a general election for December, a newspaper said on Wednesday, in what would be the biggest shift in Abe's economic policies since he came to power two years ago.
Japanese lawmakers are set to indefinitely postpone legalizing casinos as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose cabinet has been hit by a series of scandals, lacks the political leverage to pass a bill this year, sources directly involved in the process said.
When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe raised Japan's sales tax from April, he was betting he could break a jinx that has doomed leaders who raised the levy to losing their jobs.
A top Japanese government official said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should delay a planned sales-tax increase, the strongest sign yet that economic weakness is causing concern among those close to the premier ahead of the difficult tax decision.
Japan's pro-casino lawmakers have agreed to consider setting limits on Japanese nationals' entry to casinos, bowing to pressure from opponents who threatened to block a legalization bill unless it addressed issues such as gambling addiction.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will meet Russian President Vladmir Putin on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Beijing in November, the two leaders decided on Tuesday, a Japanese government official said.
The Bank of Japan on Tuesday maintained its massive asset buying program but offered a bleaker view on factory output, following signs that the world's third-largest economy was hit harder than expected by a sales tax increase in April.
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe remains "completely neutral" on whether to raise the national sales tax, Economy Minister Akira Amari said on Sunday even as he expressed concern about the strength of the country's economic recovery.
Japan's August core machinery orders due next week are expected to rise modestly for a third straight month, a Reuters poll found - doing little to ease fears that the government's growth-promotion policies aren't working fast enough.
Japan's legions of retail foreign-exchange traders, popularly known as Mrs Watanabe, are turning into sellers of yen.
The yen rose on Wednesday after Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe voiced concern about the economic impact of its fall to a six-year low, adding to the sense of a halt this week in the dollar's record-breaking run since July.
Financial policymakers of Japan, China and South Korea agreed to work together to ensure that geopolitical tensions will not threaten the region's economic recovery.
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