They didn’t do these things in those days. This was before the current age of transparency in central banking, back when Montagu Norman’s dictum was more widely regarded. Monetary policy didn’t need hype and hoopla, the central banker just made some money and sat back to watch its predictable magic.
In a way, that’s kind of what they hoped they’d be doing. On February 12, 1999, Masaru Hayami’s Bank of Japan released its historic press release; and only that release, no frills, no spectacle. The text didn’t even use the word “zero” anywhere in it. In fact, even though a world’s first, you were made to infer the main idea from the typically cryptic Japanese way of doing things.
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