Please allow me first to express my deepest sympathy for the loss of life in the large-scale fire that occurred in Saganoseki, Oita City and to offer my sincere condolences to all those affected. I will begin my speech by talking about recent economic developments at home and abroad. It can be said that Japan's economy is currently in a transitional period, where the economy is shifting from a deflationary or zero-inflation economy that lasted for several decades from the collapse of the bubble economy in the early 1990s until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, to an economy that grows while both prices and wages ... (full story)