we think today's boj decision basically tried to show the boj's proactive action against any negative shock possibly coming from overseas market. >> another search operation has gotten underway in another city in northern japan. unlike other searches this one is especially grim as this one includes elementary school children. it is the first time such an intensive search has been carried out. the search was organized after the parents of four missing children made the request. a squad of heavy machinery moved into action on tuesday to remove debris. the river had been dammed more than a kilometer upstream and drained of water. 70 pupils died in the disaster. four are still listed as missing along with 40 other civilians. >> translator: we hope to find even a small clue of the missing people to return to their long waiting families. >> the search will continue about ten days. >> u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton says she will attend the first meeting of friends of syria, a broad coalition against the syrian government. the meeting will take place in tunisia next week. >> we stand

the boj also hints it will keep policy ultra loose for some time to come. >>> we've been hit before. a deal for greece by monday looks increasingly likely as reports swell that athens will be given even more breathing room by germany and the ecb. >>> plus, lehman brothers subpoenas as activities continue of jpmorgan in the days before lehman collapsed. >>> hello. welcome to the program. a looming political crisis for germany is going to be the subject of our talking point this morning. christine is with us as well for two hours today. jim rogers will be joining us a witt later. german chancellor angela merkel called off her trip to rome, forced to cancel a scheduled meeting with mario monti in the wake of a scandal involving the german president christian wolfe. patricia is in frankfurt with the details. just to explain the background story here and what we're now expecting over the next hour and a half. >> reporter: the speculation, of course, is that christian wolfe, our german president, may athouns his resignation as early as today, half an hour after he will make his announcemen

ramy inocencio has more on the boj's interesting move. good morning. >> reporter: today's move by the bank of japan was unexpected but it ended up being a very welcome jolt. stock investors and currency traders reacting well. what are the details here in the bank of japan said it's going to add another $130 billion to its asset program and this latest amount here is going to be used to buy long-term government bonds. that means the entire program will have a war chest of more than $830 billion. in addition, the boj said it would fix consumer inflation at 1% for the time being. and that adds, of course, a sense of stability to the markets and echos what the u.s. federal reserve did last month and that it when it announced it would target a 2% inflation rate. the interest rate, the boj is keeping that between 0% and 1%. the yen weakened as much as 0.6% to hit an intraday low of this, of more than 78 yen to the dollar. a weaker yen, of course, is better for japan's exporters. it's trading at 79.72 to the dollar. as for the nikkei, it reverse

the move demonstrates the boj's resolve in tackling deflation and could get prices s on an upward trend. if the past is any indication, the bank will face difficulty realizing its aims. looking at the ten years through last year, consumer inflation topped the 1% level only in 2008. in the other years, cpi was either negative or stayed close to zero. >>> in other parts of the world, eu eurozone countries are expected to postpone a decision on additional financial aid for greece. the debt-strapped nation has not met some requirements for a bailout. jean-claude juncker said the eurozone finance minister's meeting slated for wednesday is now canceled. a teleconference will be held instead. he said although the greek parliament approved new austerity measures, the governing parties have not handed in written pledges to implement them. juncker noted the greek government has not presented the details on this year's spending cuts. eurozone members will finalize the plan at a meeting next wepz at the earliest. greece could default on its debts unless it receives aid by march toth, when the count

boj also clarified its policy goal by setting a price stability goal. for the meantime, the target will be a 1% growth in consumer priced index. he said this shows the commitment to overcome inflation and said that it will keep conducting, quote, strong monetary easing until the goal is achieved. the central bank is expected to keep its near zero interest rates unchanged for a while. markets welcomed the sevcentral bank's decision, the nikkei 225 shot up to close at a six-month high. that's all from the nikkei business report. back to you, chloe. >> thank you so much for that. appreciate it. ross? >> thanks for that. we'll take a short break. still to come, more auction results to come in europe at the top of the hour. there's also greek gdp and the latest economic sentiment numbers out of germany with the zew and are you feeling the l e love? we'll talk valentine's day, the day that "sports illustrated" magazine has announced who will grace its cover this year as well. we'll leave you for the moment with the news that kate upton, the model who will gra

the drop would add pressure on the boj to ease monetary policy.an's central bank will announce its policy rate decision tomorrow for watch for that. and the cost of italian one-year debt fell at a 12 billion euro auction this morning. the yields fell to 2.23% from 2.73% in mid-january and the lowest since june of 2011. demand was weaker than at last month's auction with the bid to cover ratio 1.1%. karen tso is in milan to give us more on that. >> reporter: yes, let's take a little bit more after look at the detail of that euros worth of t-bills. well, that's 50 basis points lower than just four weeks ago to a similar sized auction. if you take a longer time frame over the course of two months, that was 370 basis points lower so we are seeing an improvement in yields with the slight disappointment was lower bid to cover ratio was 1.1 down from 1.5 but we are seeing the yields go in the right direction. some of this you would have to put down to the ecb's ltro launched in december but ahead of the new operation, a three-year cash offer by the ecb l

in terms of the boj this week, we had some hope that there might be something coming out of it so we thought it was worth that in the event but to be quite honest it was a bigger deal than we thought in terms of the asset as they announced and we have also seen the reaction in dollar/yen. i think up here where we've broken 78 in dollar/yen or almost testing 79 this morning we think the upside is probably limited in dollar/yen from here. our forecast for the second quarter is 80s. so we're getting quite close to that and we think it's probably time to book some profits on yen trades at this point. >> a lot of u.s. investors have taken the trade early on this year to short the euro. obviously the euro has performed relatively well. for the first couple months of the year goldman sachs came out and said now is the time it's going to come down. do you agree with that? is. >> if you look at the euro it's important what specific cross you are looking at. euro/dollar had a dip and then we came back high. if you look at euro crosses, we've seen a very, very sharp down trend since the ltro wa

financial markets are watching to see if the boj will change its policy stance in light of the yen sustained strength. on the same day in the u.s., the commerce department will release retail sales data for january. december sales inched up 0.1%. the gain small, but sales topped $400 billion for a second straight month. also in the united states, housing starts for january are due out thursday. in december, they showed a 4.1% month to month drop. finally friday, the u.s. consumer price index for january will be out. the cbi remained flat in november and december last year. >>> a recap now of the latest market figures. more business for you next hour. >>> "newsline" is the place to turn to for the latest on japan, post march 11th. we have two segments offering two unique perspectives on the fallout from the earthquake and tsunami. "nuclear watch" brings insight and information on the fukushima daiichi crisis. and "the road ahead" focuses on rebuilding. don't miss them on "newsline." >>> the operators of the fukushima daiichi plant are trying to get a handle on what's going on in reactor numbe

the boj's surprise and the boc is vowing to help europe. >>> okay.come to cnbc's "worldwide exchange." if you're just joining us from the united states, a good morning do you. we're getting iuorio inflation report. this is where we think future policy is going go. they're saying now the inflation rate will be below target for a good part of the forecast per d period. this is over the next two years. they talk about the end of 2012. and it's more likely to be below target in 2013. we. sterling edging up slightly. the sudden pace of the decline is incertain. they're up. the forecast assumed no rate hike before the second quarter of 2014. an unchanged q.e. they remain weak in the near term. nick, your immediate reactions to that? >> well, the -- >> go ahead. >> yeah, sorry. the uk inflation forecast hasn't been the best way to steer the last couple of years since they've ever come remotely close. i mean obviously the good news has been that we're comparing it. that's what's got the headline rate drop as the backdrops out. but what the most likely candid

the boj forecasting a lower cpi, up to 2013 and even ignoring this quarterly number and even if we annualize it, it's forecast at 1.4%, which is in line with most of the street estimates, too. this is a blip below positive growth. we do expect that to improve and we expect that the trade balance is going to move to positive territory. so far the data indicates that this situation is getting worse and not better. >> like you said, there was a revision for the last quarter, what are the chances we might see another one? >> the difficult thing obviously gdp numbers are always backward looking. what we need to account for sin creased expenditures in terms of reconstruction post the earthquake last year. we have also the export data that's actually suffering because of the domestic demand is taking the ability to fulfill export orders to. that will provide positive numbers in the next quarter. i think currently on the information we have, we still expect the numbers to show positive growth for 2012. so far there's no reason to dispute that. but growth certainly was anticipated to be much better t

the dollar yen trade works, boj surprised us overnight, inflation at 1%, increases assets by 10 trillionnflation at 1%, average minus point 3%. for my money, i think they will tie and dollar yen trades above 80. >> hang on to that one. now what about the euro dollar situation, 1.30 as it continues to move lower because what is going on in athens and brussels, what is your trade there? >> i think greece is not going away, bill. look, the eu ministers are very frustrated with the politicians in agregreece. i think the market has greek fatigue. you have to be long the dollar. when you see uncertainty u.s. dollar is the place to be, you have a fed you can trust, economic growth, you have political stability. that is where i would want to have my money the dollar is the safest place for money. the euro is going to steadily take out 1.30 and head over toward 1.28. >> 1.28 you said? >> that would be my target for the next two to three weeks. regardless of the successful ltro the market is getting fatigued with europe. >> as a trader you have to anticipate what could happen, i'm not saying it wi

. >> the boj move plays right in your hands in your trade?ll, yeah, i think it's a twofold situation. while the bank of japan has expanded their balance sheet they're only going to be buying jgb. the challenge there is they moved away from purchasing risky assets which should weaken the yet but at the same time i also feel that it's not necessarily enough to convince the market that they're really going to reflate just yet. a few more steps they have to take. >> what are you going to sell versus? >> i'm going to be selling aussie dollar versus the yen. i like selling it at 84 with the stop-loss at 86 with a target of 78. >> i've got to ask you about euro/dollar before i let you one. have we seen the best level ceiling if you will in euro/dollar at this point at 1.32, 133-ish? >> i think that is a pretty tough level of resistance for the moment. i think we have the greek payments coming up next month. i think there are a lot of details that need to be worked out in that deal. i think the market has a little bit of euro fatigue between $1.30 an

is nip in the eurozone looking at the japan scenario and the lessons learned from the boj where they kept rates at near zero for so many years and the economy is in such a state? >> well, not in the eurozone, christine. the bank pulled the same trick last august. now it's interesting because sevcentral bankers, and correct if i'm wrong, central bankers when something works, we have it working in thames of moving their currencies. now we have the japanese. so who is next on the aggressive printing, who cares what happens over the next six months? >> i think -- i wouldn't say who cares what happens but they didn't care enough about what was happening. they allowed deflation to take hold and that was a real problem. i think it's great that they have now stated an explicit inflation target that is positive and they are trying to get there because that's one of the challenges that japan has had. they got into the deflation situation. they haven't been able to get out of it. the u.s. is aggressive in trying to avoid a deflation situation and i think is doing the job, also. >> many thanks t

>> to what extent can the japanese markets continue to ride on the additional easing offered by the boj last week? >> i don't think that's the reason the japanese markets are rising. i think markets across asia are rising on having factored in a doomsday ratio and the world isn't going to end so, yes, japan is up but korea is up a lot and china is up a lot and a lot of other markets -- sorry, hong kong is up -- and other markets are really moving. this isn't only on the back of asset purchases from the bank of japan. that's certainly great news for real estate and stockbrokers. >> what do you make of the s&p threat to down grade japan if it doesn't get its public debt in order? >> i think that's a total and complete irrelevant. i think if i owe the moneylender some money, that's a problem. if i owe it to my wife, it's a lot less of a problem. japanese people owe each other a lot of money. that is the same point. they owe it to each other. so the fact that, what, 5%, 6% of japanese government bonds are owned by foreigners, the country doesn't need them and very quickly should return to f

is the boj or the financial authorities in japan very close to intervention at this point?et these fairly sort of stock phrases being used by the ministry of finance officials when they're getting close talking about speculative moves in the currency, things along that sort of nature and that's basically your indication that their finger is on the trigger. i think we're very close now. >> just going back to the fed here, i asked this of julia, do you think if the fed were to do anything they should target -- because the housing market is lowered. should they target that with mortgage asset backed purchases if they are going to do anything? >> yeah, that's certainly one of the areas where the u.s. economy has the greatest impediment for further growth or to 0 picking up from this 2% insipid rate of growth they're stuck in now. a combination of all sorts of measures would be useful. i think one thing i've said in the past repeatedly which only very half-heartedly ever seems to get progressed is some real debt forgiveness on the housing market. in the absence debt not repaymen

you have the ecb getting involved, the boj, the bank of edge lind, even though the economy there is showingu believe as rick sort of articulated that global liquidity has to flow somewhere, the clients that btig is talking to increasingly believe that the upside risk to equities are greater than the downside risk. >> but that doesn't mean retail gets into the game? >> i've said this several times, i don't think ha retail matters anymore. individuals an retail investors didn't really come back to the market after the 2000 crash, so i think certainly, and i've said this for sometime now, if you are a, 60 years old, if you suffered through two bear markets, a number of fraudulent cases, and any number of concerns that have risen and fallen since, and the idea that somehow the retailer investor believes in the concept of a stock market right now, generally speaking i think is challenged. >> you mentioned some of rick's arguments, one of them now was you could have price precious -- you could have price appreciate with a cap on job growth in this country. does a rising market necessarily mean a

the boj setting a near term goal of 1% consumer inflation. policymakers are responding to growing calls for more action to help an economy in deflation, just cannot get out of it and weighed down by a very strong yen. the key interest rate remains unchanged. elsewhere in asia china's vice president xi jinping will sit down with president obama and vice president biden on agenda key issues like the economy, nuclear threat, trade and human rights. the visit is important because he is expected to take over as china's next president. that will be next year. >> just ready for that pronouncement. i would have called him 11 jinping. >> because of roman numerals. >> i would have skipped it. >> the vice premier. >> i would have said 11. >> i would have said "z." >> or you could have done a heavyweight chinese man is here today. >> i go with kim jong i, ii, and iii. we're going to get some is mail on this, too, that this is somehow anti -- >> it isn't. >> i'm not feeling anti anything. >> i'm sure they will be pleased to give us some enjoyment in our d