Loud and Clear on Japanese If anyone doubted whether the world's most hyperactive central bank was losing its nerve, they were set straight on Tuesday. At a routine meeting that markets were expecting to pass uneventfully, the Bank of Japan announced it would double the scope of two special programs meant to spur bank lending, launching the Nikkei up 3%. The move isn't huge in the context of the BOJ's monetary easing program. Citigroup estimates that if fully utilized, the facilities would add around ¥20 trillion ($196 billion) to the central bank's balance sheet, which was already set to nearly double over two years to ¥290 trillion by the end of 2014. And the effectiveness of the programs themselves is questionable. The larger of the two BOJ facilities, which provided funds to banks in proportion to their increase in lending, was only being used at a third of its ¥15 trillion capacity. As banks and corporations are flush with cash already, demand for loans, not supply, is the true constraint on credit growth in Japan. But the psychological effect of telegraphing the bank's aggressiveness is clear and fits the playbook of aggressively proactive Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda. HSBC economist Izumi Devalier argues that by doubling the programs, and doing so in advance of their expiration at the end of March, the BOJ is "maximizing the announcement effect." It comes just as confidence in the great Abenomics experiment has hit a rough patch. Before Tuesday's rally, the Nikkei Stock Average was down more than 11% this year, and fourth-quarter gross domestic product growth was a tepid 1%. Bank lending has been lukewarm, with outstanding loans up just 2.3% from a year earlier in January. And there's all manner of angst over how April's sales-tax increase will ripple through the economy. With Tuesday's move, Mr. Kuroda signaled he is ready to do still more should the economy falter. The sharp stock market reaction indicates that investors are getting the message loud and clear.