What happened? What's gonna happen?

For those like myself who are still confused about what the heck is wrong with Japanese personal consumption, Professor Ono Yoshiyasu of Osaka University offers a two page review of the macro effects of government policies of the last 15 years, with some guesses about the individual saver's thinking processes, courtesy the fine folks at the Australia-Japan Research Centre.

Professor Ono's paper makes for a depressing, if brief, reading experience. He certainly sees little good in the "purging the bad from the system" experiments of the late 90s and early millenium.

The concept of a "stagnation dynamics" is great oxymoronic fun, though.