Abe advisor - Japan market shows power of monetary policy

WASHINGTON, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Recent stock price and exchange rate movements show that monetary policy can have a real effect on the economy, an economic adviser to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Friday during a speech in Washington.

"The argument that monetary policy doesn't work was disproved by the present surge of stock price, as well as the weakening of the yen," Koichi Hamada, Abe's special economic adviser, said during a speech in Washington at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Hamada, a Yale University professor, also said monetary policy would not be enough to solve the Japanese government's debt situation.

Japan's government has been pushing for a more aggressive monetary policy to try to pull Japan out of a long struggle with stagnant economic growth and persistent deflation.