BoJ should stop meddling in financial markets

Worrying issue: A file picture showing people offering prayer near the site where Abe was fatally shot in Nara. Although Kuroda contends that the yen’s problem is a strong dollar, this simply isn’t true. The trade-weighted currency has fallen sharply over the past couple of years. — AP

WHATEVER else killed George Washington, the draining of more than a third of his blood in less than half a day would probably have done him in anyway.

Well into the 19th century, bloodletting, as it was called, was the favoured treatment of doctors for pretty much everything for two reasons: First, it was based on a generally accepted (though woefully wrong) idea of how the human body worked. And second, no one really tracked treatments’ success or failure rates.