be perceived by some market participants as a " deadline, " thereby creating unnecessary speculation about the bank's policy conduct. as i have explained, monetary policy should be conducted by taking into consideration various uncertainties, and therefore it is undesirable to attract excessive attention merely to specific timing or a numerical value. based on these points, i have judged that deleting the description of the projection in the outlook report is unavoidable. i believe that providing a detailed and articulate explanation on the mechanism of price rises and on the assessment of risks will lead to more appropriate communication with market participants. today, i have expressed my views on changes in the supply capacity of japan's economy and how monetary policy should be conducted in response to these changes. the bank will persistently pursue monetary easing measures and provide its utmost support for the sound development of the national economy by ensuring price stability. under such circumstances, i hope to see continued proactive initiatives and efforts by firms and the government.

a negative interest rate. ” qqe evolved into a flexible and powerful policy framework that enables the bank to make full use of the three dimensions of policy measures : quantity, quality, and interest rates. today, with this backdrop in mind, i will focus on the two key issues in considering how to ensure a resilient monetary policy framework : ( 1 ) the role of anchoring inflation expectations and ( 2 ) the transmission channels of a negative interest rate policy. i. re - anchoring inflation expectations a. crude oil prices and inflation expectations as many of us well recognized, crude oil prices declined significantly from the summer of 2014. in terms of the inflation forecast, the decline in crude oil prices is generally taken to be temporary. crude oil futures markets were not broadly anticipating a further decline in crude oil prices over the next year. consequently, long - term inflation expectations were unchanged, as evidenced by fairly stable developments in 6 - to 10 - year u. s. inflation forecasts collected by the survey of professional forecasters ( chart 2 ). in contrast, a bis central bankers ’ speeches puzzling decline in long - term inflation forecasts was observed in japan. even considering the technical difference in the details of the data, it is hard to deny that the recent weakening in long - term inflation expectations in japan was partly caused by the declines in crude oil prices from 2014. the headline consumer price index ( cpi ) inflation started to fall more or less in reflection of the declines in crude oil prices, which were largely common to advanced economies after 2014. however, a marked difference was observed in terms of the pace of recovery in the underlying trend of the cpi inflation between the united states and japan. in the united states, the cpi inflation excluding energy rebounded toward 2 percent fairly quickly, while the comparable cpi inflation indicator in japan has remained relatively low so far : positive but significantly below 2 percent. it could be said that inflation dynamics in japan are less resilient than those in the united states against significant external shocks, including large swings in crude oil prices. as mentioned earlier, oil price fluctuations should not produce persistent effects on long - term inflation expectations, in that they are typically perceived to be just temporary. this could be the case for the united states while something different must be factored in to understand the case for japan. an interpretation of different inflation dynamics between the united states and japan could be that long - term inflation expectations are yet to be anchored around the 2 percent target in japan