The Bank of Japan has officially raised interest rates to their highest level in 31 years, a move so mathematically improbable that the International Astronomical Union has begun preliminary discussions about whether the rate itself qualifies as a new planetary body.
The central bank, which spent two decades keeping rates pinned near zero (a strategy that made sense in 2008 and somehow never stopped making sense), has now decided that 0.5% is the sweet spot. This represents a rate increase so gradual that geologists are studying it to better understand continental drift.
Financial analysts are struggling to process what this means. Some have suggested that investors should immediately reposition their portfolios. Others have simply stared at their screens and asked whether 31 years is long enough to forget how interest rates actually work. The answer, it turns out, is no.
The real question nobody wants to answer: if rates were stuck at zero for this long, what were they doing? The answer is the same thing Pluto was doing before 2006 — existing in a state of confused legitimacy, occasionally wondered about by people who remember it differently.
Pluto, reached for comment, declined to speak but sources close to the dwarf planet suggest it is “not surprised” and “tired of this.” The Bank of Japan did not return requests for comment, presumably because they are still doing the math on what 0.5% actually means in real terms.