The Nihon Keizai Shimbun at one point chose Peter Tasker as the best equities analyst in Japan for five years running. That is not the best foreign analyst of equities. The best analyst of Japanese equities markets, period.
In an essay for the Financial Times, he proposes a very, very long-term solution to Japan's debt and stagnation crises.
Always a worthwhile read.
I realize this is a common "thought-terminating cliche" on the tea party side of the argument, but I really fail to see how more debt solves Japan's debt problem.
ReplyDeleteNow, I think it's reasonable to say that Japan doesn't have a debt problem at all, as the national debt is as equally fictional as the national savings.
What was "savings" 1990-2010 is going to have to be converted to "taxes" 2020-2040, since 80% of those savings was put right into government bonds.
Population-wise, Japan is going to shrink from here, by 2050 falling back to ~1965 level population (but with the children and elderly components switched).
How the current generation pensions off its seniors and also saves for its own retirement is the interesting question.
Low debt to GDP is also a form of savings, though.
The important thing is that Japan retains the productive capacity to either provide its needs or produce the goods and services to trade for these needs.
So far so good, Japan basically won the game in this category, and is the world's #1 creditor nation, with a $3T net capital position.
The main problem is that Japan's colossal prosperity has been distributed rather unevenly, with a too-high Gini and an underfunded patchwork welfare services.