Category: Japan Economy
The analysis published under this category are as follows.
Friday, May 03, 2019
Toward Japan’s Economic End-Game / Economics / Japan Economy
By: Dan_Steinbock
As the spotlight has been on Japan's new Emperor Naruhito, the economy is coping with half a decade of Abenomics, monetary injections, huge debt – and a proposed sales tax that could make things a lot worse by the fall.
Ever since Shinzo Abe started his second stint as Prime Minister, Japan has focused on positive economic signals, which has sparked futile hopes, including a bad sales tax proposition.
Japanese officials vow to stick to the planned tax hike in October (it has been delayed twice), barring a big economic shock. With the 2019 budget, Abe hopes to offset adverse impact of the sales tax by returning much of the extra revenue to consumers via $18 billion of offsetting measures, instead of faster debt-reduction.
Sunday, September 10, 2017
Another Demographic D-Day is Coming for Japan / Economics / Japan Economy
By: Harry_Dent
D-Day.Demographic death day.
Maybe not as bloody as the battlefield in Normandy but equally as devastating in the long term.
And Japan is facing its second one.
Japan’s Baby Boom started to slow down in 1942 coming into World War II and peaked – forever – in 1949 after soldiers came home from war and made a lot of babies.
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Saturday, January 28, 2017
Modern Delusions, Japan Thinks It Can Balance Its Budget / Economics / Japan Economy
By: John_Rubino
A recurring problem for most developed-world governments is explaining why last year’s plan didn’t work while convincing voters that this year’s new and improved plan will do the trick. This is especially tough when the new plan is pretty much the same as the old one and therefore just as likely to fail.
Wednesday, November 02, 2016
The Economic Twilight Zone in Japan / Economics / Japan Economy
By: Rodney_Johnson
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.As I learned in my MBA studies in the early 1990s, the sun was setting on the U.S. as a global economic power, just as it had on the British Empire 80 years before. The Land of the Rising Sun was ascending, and our job was to manage the decline of the U.S. as effectively as possible. There was even a book from famed McKinsey consultant Kenichi Ohmae on the subject, Triad Power.
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Thursday, September 22, 2016
Japan’s Economy Impending Monetary Exhaustion / Economics / Japan Economy
By: Dan_Steinbock
Japan’s monetary gamble and Abenomics are approaching the end of the road. Neither Brussels nor Washington is immune to the adverse consequences of Tokyo's monetary exhaustion, says Dan Steinbock. Recently, Japan’s second quarter GDP growth was revised up to 0.7 percent, after four consecutive quarters of stagnation. But don’t set your hopes too high.
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Monday, May 09, 2016
Japan: An Economy of Zeros / Economics / Japan Economy
By: Michael_Pento
The red sun on the flag of Japan symbolizes its position as the land of the rising sun. However, during WWII that round shape was pejoratively referred to as a zero. And now, since Japans economy is emitting so many zeros it can, unfortunately, once again be referred to as the land of zeros.
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Thursday, November 19, 2015
Japans Sinking Economy - Is Anybody Okay Out There? / Economics / Japan Economy
By: John_Rubino
In normal times, the world’s major economies are a mixed bag. Some are up, some are down, some are placid, some are in crisis. It’s only at the boom/bust extremes that everyone finds themselves in more-or-less the same boat.
This is looking like one of those times — and the boat is sinking. Japan, for instance, is back in recession…
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Monday, November 09, 2015
Is Japan's Wicked Economic Winter Almost Over? / Economics / Japan Economy
By: EWI
Economic blossoms may bloom again in the Land of the Rising Sun
The winter season is a common metaphor for a bleak period in someone's life: Borrowing a line from Shakespeare, John Steinbeck titled his final novel "The Winter of Our Discontent."
Nikolai Kondratieff used "winter" to describe the worst part of an economic cycle. Indeed, the famous Russian economist used all four seasons as metaphors for the four natural phases of expansion and contraction that an economy goes through in 50 or 60 years.
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Tuesday, September 08, 2015
Abenomics Stalls, So What’s Japan Supposed To Do Now? / Economics / Japan Economy
By: John_Rubino
It was just three years ago that new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe promised to pull Japan out of its “lost decades” by printing epic amounts of new yen. He got what he wanted from the Bank of Japan, which bought up pretty much all the available government debt with newly-created currency. After hardly changing at all in the previous seven years, the BoJ’s balance sheet — a proxy for its money creation — tripled.
Monday, August 24, 2015
Japan Economy Clear Conclusions Concerning QE / Economics / Japan Economy
By: Michael_Pento
Japan was recently slammed with more bad economic news; growth contracted yet again in the second quarter. Gross Domestic Product for the world’s third largest economy fell by an annualized 1.6% in the three months ended in June.
The economic plan known as Abenomics, which promised massive money printing coupled with government spending would put the world's third largest economy on a path to sustainable growth, seems to have hit another roadblock. This latest contraction marks the third such set back since the optimistic launch of Abenomics at the end of 2012. Japan appears to be headed towards a triple dip recession.
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Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Japan Ageing Population Still a Problem With No Solution / Economics / Japan Economy
By: Rodney_Johnson
There’s a village in Japan where the dead outnumber the living, and I don’t mean the ancestors in the cemetery. The bodies are dispersed around the small town of Nagoro.It’s a small community of some 35 people, most in their 60s or older. The place is so sparsely populated that the locals consider their 150-plus dead a part of their community.
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Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Prelude to a Japanese Revival / Politics / Japan Economy
By: STRATFOR
John Minnich writes: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has arrived in Washington, the third stop on his maiden voyage to the United States since assuming office in 2012. Over the next two days, he will hold a summit with U.S. President Barack Obama on U.S.-Japanese defense and trade cooperation, attend a state dinner in his honor and address a joint session of the U.S. Congress. In his speech before Congress, Abe will reaffirm Japan's commitment to promoting peace and security in East Asia and extol the virtues of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-country free trade agreement that spans the Pacific Ocean Basin and pointedly excludes China.
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
Japan Short Term Gains And Long Term Disaster / Economics / Japan Economy
By: Raul_I_Meijer
About a month ago, Japan’s giant GPIF pension fund announced it had started doing in Q4 2014, what PM Abe had long asked it to: shift a large(r) portion of its investment portfolio from bonds to stocks. No more safe assets for the world’s largest pension fund, or a lot less at least, but risky ones. For Abe this promises the advantage of an economy that looks healthier than it actually is, while for the fund it means that the returns on its investments could be higher than if it stuck to safe assets. Not a word about the dangers, not a word about why pensions funds were, for about as long as they’ve been in existence, obliged by law to only hold AAA assets. This is from February 27:
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Japan Is Writing History As A Prime Boom And Bust Economic Case / Economics / Japan Economy
By: GoldSilverWorlds
Recently, we wrote a paper about the dynamics behind the boom and bust cycles, based on the view of the Austrian School (the Austrian Business Cycle Theory, or ABCT). The key takeaway was that central banks don’t help in smoothing the amplitude of the cycles, but rather are the cause of cycles.
Business cycles are a direct result of excessive credit flow into the market, facilitated by an intentionally low interest rate set by the government.
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Wednesday, November 19, 2014
The Abenomics Japan Economic Death Spiral / Economics / Japan Economy
By: Peter_Schiff
As Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe has turned his country into a petri dish of Keynesian ideas, the trajectory of Japan's economy has much to teach us about the wisdom of those policies. And although the warning sirens are blasting at the highest volumes imaginable, few economists can hear the alarm. (A longer version of this article can be found in Euro Pacific Capital's Global Investor Newsletter.)
Data out this week shows the Japanese economy returning to recession by contracting for the second straight quarter (and three out of the last four quarters). The conclusion reached by the Keynesian apologists is that the benefits of inflation caused by the monetary stimulus have been counteracted, temporarily, by the negative effects of inflation caused by taxes. This tortured logic should be a clear indication that the policies were flawed from the start.
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Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Japan Is Dying And We Still Don’t Get It?! / Economics / Japan Economy
By: Raul_I_Meijer
What is it with us? Don’t we WANT to understand? Japan announced on Monday that its economy is in hopeless trouble and back in recession (as if it was ever out). And what do we see? ‘Experts’ and reporters clamoring for more stimulus. But if Japan has shown us anything over the past years, and you’re free to pick any number between 2 and 20 years, it’s that the QE-based kind of stimulus doesn’t work. Not for the real economy, that is.
Monday, November 17, 2014
Japan's Last Stand - Inflate or Die / Economics / Japan Economy
By: Michael_Pento
There is a popular American military term called a "last stand", which is meant to describe a situation where a combat force attempts to hold a defensive position in the face of overwhelming odds. The defensive force usually sustains very heavy casualties or is completely destroyed, as happened at Custer's Last Stand. General Custer, misreading his enemy's size and ability, fought his final and fatal battle of Little Bighorn; leading to complete annihilation of both himself and his troops.
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Tuesday, November 11, 2014
Scary Bank of Japan Goes All In Again - Abenomics 2.0 / Economics / Japan Economy
By: John_Mauldin
Grant Williams writes: Last week, appropriately enough on Halloween, the Bank of Japan did something truly scary.
As shocks go, this one — though it had been fairly well-telegraphed to the markets that something wicked this way might be coming — was in a league of its own.
I’m sure that by now you’re well aware of what Kuroda-san (the Governor of the Bank of Japan) announced to the world; but in case you’re not, here’s a little recap:
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Wednesday, November 05, 2014
Japanese Governments Revenge On Its People / Economics / Japan Economy
By: Raul_I_Meijer
I know I’ve written a lot about Japan lately, and that for some it’s been enough for a while, but still, what happens today under the no longer rising sun is going to have such repercussions worldwide that it would be foolish not to pay attention. Moreover, there’s something about what Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said this morning that both perfectly and painfully illustrates to what depths, economically as well as morally, the country has sunk.
Wednesday, November 05, 2014
Japan's kaput?! / Economics / Japan Economy
By: Axel_Merk
Japan’s economy is down but not yet out. The world’s third largest economy won’t go quietly. Both these statements are merely my opinion, but if you believe there’s a risk that I’m right, you may want to pay attention to what the implications may be.