Recently, in a manifestation of its loss of faith in its formerly godlike bureaucracy, Japan established a board of outsiders to help the Bank of Japan formulate monetary policy. One prominent member of that board is Kazuo Ueda, a (first-rate) American-trained economist, who has been publicly quoted as saying Japan ought to declare that its long-run target is not price stability but inflation at a couple of percent per year. That's exactly what I would have said--and what a number of staff economists at sober-sided official institutions have privately told me they believe, but are not allowed to say in public.