Category: Japan Economy
The analysis published under this category are as follows.Thursday, March 07, 2013
Can Japan's Bernanke Revive Japanese Econcomy With Another Round of "Easy Money"? / Economics / Japan Economy
Keith Fitz-Gerald writes: I think I hear the sounds of helicopter engines warming up in Tokyo.
Newly elected 2nd time Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has officially tapped Haruhiko Kuroda as the next head of the Bank of Japan and the financial markets here seem quite pleased.
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Sunday, February 17, 2013
Is Japan's Economy Heading for an Endgame? / Economics / Japan Economy
Newly elected Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has promised to boost the Japanese economy by unlimited stimulus and increased government intervention in the financial market. The Japanese economy has been bogged down by lucklustre economic growth which can be shown by the following GDP Growth chart from 1993-2013.
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Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Why You Shouldn’t Believe Japan’s New Economic Stimulus Will Work / Economics / Japan Economy
George Leong writes: Japan, under newly elected Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, will aggressively try to get the country’s economy back on track after more than two decades of economic stalling, but it will not be easy. Armed with a new stimulus spending of $116 billion, the hope is that the stimulus spending will drive consumer spending and help revitalize an economy that has been in a comatose state. (Source: “Japanese government approves $116bn stimulus package,” BBC News, January 11, 2013.)
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Thursday, December 27, 2012
Japan's Patriotic War Agenda / Politics / Japan Economy
THE SICKLY GIANT
Japan has the the world's third-biggest economy and was only recently pushed into this third place by China - but it remains world No 1, and by far, as measured by its sovereign debt-to-GNP ratio. Its new Liberal Democratic Party-LDP government, no different from LDP governments which have almost exclusively ruled since 1955, is setting out with a proud (in fact desperate) task: to end deflation by pushing down the world value of the JPY (yen) to a theoretical point where "inflation of 2% or 3% a year" will be possible.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Japan Big Bank QE, Weakening Yen to Inflate Economy and Stocks / Economics / Japan Economy
“By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. And not one man in a million will detect the theft,” John Maynard Keynes wrote in 1920.
On Dec 12th, a shadowy group of political lackeys, voted 11-1 to launch what’s popularly dubbed as “Infinity QE-4,” – the Federal Reserve’s most radical scheme ever, that’s designed to enable the US-government to continue borrowing as much as $1-trillion per year, for the next several years, if necessary, in order to finance the burgeoning US-welfare state. US-lawmakers are negotiating over the details of the so-called “fiscal cliff,” but are simply nibbling at the edges of $1-trillion budget deficits. Yet US-politicians from both sides of the isle, believe they can stave off significant tax hikes and spending cuts, without having to pay a penalty of sharply higher interest rates, which normally follows such fiscal recklessness.
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Friday, November 02, 2012
What Hope Means in Japan These Days / Economics / Japan Economy
Keith Fitz-Gerald writes: [Kyoto] - Frustrated by a system that has trapped them in decades of low to no growth, an entirely new generation of Japanese may be working with the most precious of all resources - hope.
They're taking matters into their own hands and going around the traditional Japanese way of doing things.
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Sunday, September 09, 2012
The Myth that Japan is Broke: The World’s Largest “Debtor” is now the Largest Creditor / Interest-Rates / Japan Economy
Japan’s massive government debt conceals massive benefits for the Japanese people, with lessons for the U.S. debt “crisis.”
In an April 2012 article in Forbes titled “If Japan Is Broke, How Is It Bailing Out Europe?”, Eamonn Fingleton pointed out the Japanese government was by far the largest single non-eurozone contributor to the latest Euro rescue effort. This, he said, is “the same government that has been going round pretending to be bankrupt (or at least offering no serious rebuttal when benighted American and British commentators portray Japanese public finances as a trainwreck).” Noting that it was also Japan that rescued the IMF system virtually single-handedly at the height of the global panic in 2009, Fingleton asked:
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Thursday, February 02, 2012
Godzilla Will Come Out of Tokyo Bay Before Japan Economy and Stock Market Rebounds / Economics / Japan Economy
Keith Fitz-Gerald writes: Let's talk Japan.
Every year some analyst comes out with a variation of the story that Japan is about to rebound.
Usually the argument goes something like this: Japanese markets are impossibly cheap and the central bank will be there to prevent a catastrophe.
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Wednesday, December 28, 2011
Japanese Economy Slumps, Industrial Production Falls 2.6% / Economics / Japan Economy
A torrent of bad news hit Japan in November. Please consider some details from the Bloomberg article Japan Factory Output Falls on Global Slump
- Factory output fell 2.6 percent from October
- Exports fell for the second straight month
- Capital spending in the third quarter dropped 9.8 percent
- The Bank of Japan Tankan quarterly index of corporate sentiment fell to minus 4 this month. A negative figure indicates that pessimists outnumber optimists
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Japan Recession Ends, but Will Economic Problems Continue? / Economics / Japan Economy
What does it say about the world when the best economic news is coming from Japan? Perhaps a better way to approach this would be to say that Japan’s latest economic figures offer some reassurance that debt worries have not paralyzed all the major economies.
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Sunday, November 13, 2011
Will Fukushima $10 Trillion Nuclear Catastrophe Bankrupt Japan? / Politics / Japan Economy
I noted in April that a nuclear catastrophe could cost ten trillion dollars or more (many times more than the insurance which nuclear power operators are required to carry) … and could even bankrupt a country.
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Tuesday, July 05, 2011
Post Nuclear Japan: Atomic Debt / Economics / Japan Economy
Electricity cuts and rationing in Japan as it very carefully thinks about the dangers of getting all 49 of its remaining nuclear reactors back up to full charge, and tests all the way before doing it, can be used by nuclear apologists as a "We told you so !" proof that we need nuclear power. But in fact Japan faces things a lot more difficult and challenging, even, than taking a leaf out of Germany and Switzerland's books and starting a total nuclear exit strategy.
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Friday, April 15, 2011
The Myth of Japan's Economic Depression Lost Decades / Economics / Japan Economy
The earthquake, tsunami, and lingering nuclear crisis in Japan have devastated that country's people and their place in the global economy. Can the island nation recover? To see where Japan might go next, we have to look at one of the persistent myths about its recent past — the myth of the lost decades.
It is widely thought that Japan is in the 21st year of a recession, or at least of a muddle-through sluggish economy. Part of this poor performance, economists and the financial press habitually state, is that Japan has experienced a terrible deflation. Nevertheless, I claim that Japan's economic state for the past two decades, up until the recent disasters, has in fact been comparable to that of most developed nations.
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Monday, April 11, 2011
Japan's Nuclear Godzilla / Politics / Japan Economy
Eric Margolis writes: Japan’s nuclear calamity has shown once again the remarkable courage, patience, and stoicism of that nation’s people.
As a visitor to Japan for the past 36 years and former columnist for one of its leading newspapers, Mainichi Daily News, the giant earthquake and ensuing tsunami that savaged northern Japan filled me with anguish and sorrow.
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Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Tsunami Accelerates Japan's Economic Meltdown Driven by Debt and Demographics / Economics / Japan Economy
The linear thinkers that dominate the mainstream media and the halls of power in Washington D.C. are assessing the series of disasters in Japan without connecting the dots of history. Their ideological desire to convince people that things will go back to normal in short order flies in the face of the facts. It makes me wonder whether these supposed thought leaders lack true intelligence or whether their ideological biases convince them to lie. At the end of the day it comes down to wealth, power and control. If those in power were to tell the truth about the true consequences of demographics, debt, disasters, and devaluation, their subjects would revolt and toss them out. Before the multiple disasters struck Japan last week, the sun was already setting on this empire. The recent tragic events will accelerate that descent.
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Friday, March 18, 2011
Japan Disaster, How Bad Will it Get? / Economics / Japan Economy
Money Morning Chief Investment Strategist Keith Fitz-Gerald has spent almost every summer for the past two decades at his family home in Kyoto - which is why he knows Japan in a way that few other U.S. traders could ever hope to.
As part of Money Morning's continued coverage of the disaster in Japan, Fitz-Gerald is sharing those insights with readers. Here are the highlights of a question-and-answer session we held with Fitz-Gerald late yesterday Thursday).
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Monday, March 14, 2011
Economic Aftershocks of the Japan Earthquake / Economics / Japan Economy
David Zeiler writes: The 8.9 magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami that hit northeastern Japan today (Friday) had an immediate impact on financial markets all over the world. However, the effects of the damage and rebuilding will reverberate through the Japanese economy for months, if not years.
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Thursday, September 30, 2010
Japanese Economy Threatened by China Rare Earth Metals Ban / Economics / Japan Economy
Jason Simpkins wites: Japanese authorities last Friday released from detention the captain of a Chinese fishing boat that was found in disputed waters. However, China continues to withhold exports of rare earth metals to its island neighbor.
Rare earth metals are crucial to Japan's high-tech industry, and the ban on shipments from China, which has been in place since Tuesday of last week, could cripple the country's economy.
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Friday, September 17, 2010
Japan’s Economic Problem Is Bigger Than Yen / Economics / Japan Economy
After much speculation and many flying rumors, Japanese government stepped in on Wednesday, Sep. 15 and intervened--sell yen, buy dollar--for the first time in six years. The yen had risen about 10% against the dollar this year, and just reached yet another new 15-year high against the US dollar, an eight-year high against the euro, on Tuesday, Sep. 14.
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Thursday, September 16, 2010
When Japan's Debt Ridden Economy Collapses / Economics / Japan Economy
Only a partisan two-bit hack economist/liberal rag columnist from an Ivy League University with a Nobel Prize could look at the following two charts and conclude that the Japanese Government failed to revive the Japanese economy over the last twenty years because they spent far too little on fiscal stimulus. Japanese government debt as a percentage of GDP was 52% in 1989, prior to their real estate and stock market crash. Today it stands at 200% of GDP. Current budget projections show the debt reaching 250% of GDP by 2015.
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