1. Japan’s economy grew at the fastest pace since 2011 in the first three months of this year, an annualized 5.9 percent gain, driven by spending that was frontloaded before an April 1 sales-tax increase.
2. Japan unexpectedly sank into a recession last quarter as the world’s third-largest economy struggled to shake off the impact of an April sales-tax boost, raising the odds of a delay in a second bump in the levy.
3. Gross domestic product shrank an annualized 1.6 percent in the three months through September, a second straight drop — matching the textbook definition of a recession. Unadjusted for price changes, the economy contracted an annualized 3 percent, the Cabinet Office said. Japanese stocks slumped.
4.Nominal GDP, which is unadjusted for price changes, also shrank a second straight period, at least the fifth such recession in the past decade. The level, which is most important when considering tax revenue or corporate profits, is 7.9 percent below the peak reached in 1997, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
5. The April increase of the sales tax to 8 percent from 5 percent triggered in the second quarter the deepest contraction in more than five years. Etsuro Honda, an adviser to the prime minister, said last week that a 2015 value-added tax increase to 10 percent was out of the question if third-quarter growth were less than 3.8 percent.
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