In the past year, Japan's exports fell 45.7%. Exports to all regions were hit - down 52% to America, 45% to China, and 46.7% to Asia as a whole. Japan's mighty national champions, its automakers, have been hit the worst: Toyota's exports are off 56.2%, Honda's 46.3%, Nissan's 62.1%.That's absolutely stunning. It is catastrophic. Words …
Tag: Japanese economy
Shop for Japan? (Noah Smith)
It has often been said, by this writer and others that Japan needs to "raise domestic consumption" in light of the current economic crisis. In actuality, this is a murky concept. There are a number of different reasons for this, and a number of ways it can be done.Reason 1: Correcting international imbalances. "Surplus" countries …
The long and short of it (Noah Smith)
Gerald Curtis's article in the Financial Times deserves a response from me as well. The short version of my response is that I agree with Tobias: the fact that the DPJ will not be able to avert a depression is not sufficient reason to write them off.The longer version is this: Curtis is right when …
A pox on both their houses?
Writing in the Financial Times, Columbia's Gerald Curtis laments the impotence of politicians from both the LDP and the DPJ in the midst of a historic economic crisis.The LDP, he writes, is "like the proverbial deer staring into the headlights...paralysed by fear rather than energized by it." But the DPJ is little better, as he …
The can kicks back (Noah Smith)
In my earlier post, I stated that Japan's current-account surplus can vanish in one of two ways: either Japan can consume more (which it won't because of debt and demographics), or it can (over)produce less. That is true. But when the adjustment happens is not set in stone.A casual observer might think that Nakagawa Shoichi's …
The accounting reaper cometh (Noah Smith)
A specter is haunting East Asia. Consumption is falling in the world's "deficit" countries, as American and British consumers rebuild their balance sheets. The global current-account and capital-account imbalances are thus coming under immense strain. An accounting identity states that for the imbalances to vanish, one of two things must happen in the "surplus" countries: …
Just a flesh wound
Speaking in the lower house's budget committee on Monday, Aso Taro said, "If you compare our economic conditions to other countries, our wounds are shallow."Naturally I immediately thought of nothing so much as this:I think Jun Okumura is on to something when he writes that the prime minister isn't a "total nincompoop," just in his …
A twenty years’ crisis
"Japan is an economy that is almost certainly producing well below its productive capacity - that is, the immediate problem facing Japan is one of demand, not supply. And it gives every appearance of being in a liquidity trap - that is, conventional monetary policy appears to have been pushed to its limits, yet the …
Dollars and yen(ts) (Noah Smith)
There's an interesting article in BusinessWeek asking whether Japan will intervene to push down the strengthening yen. The consensus seems to be that it will, even though such a policy is not necessarily optimal from an economic viewpoint, and may not in fact work. But a weak yen seems to still be an important part …
The LDP and the DPJ face the future
The LDP and the DPJ had their annual conventions in Tokyo over the weekend, steeling their resolve for the Diet session already underway and the general election that will occur within the year.For the second straight year, the incumbent LDP president and prime minister told the party faithful that the "responsible governing party" (how the …
Tobias S. Harris 