Mowog

Obama's Infrastructure Rally: Take a Swig of Kool Aid

Eventually the US turns on the printing presses, steadily eroding the value of the US dollar. Rare is the politician willing to lose votes by restraining its spending.

Deflation Is Acid Burning Through the Economy

Nah, we started to get serious about giving up on capitalism and unfettered free trade under Hoover and FDR.

Michael Moore's Curious Economics: Nationalize the Car Companies

Michael Moore isn't a total idiot? Now that's a source for optimism.

Why America Won't Become Like Japan

Good article.

Japan is considering raising the national consumption tax to 9% from the current 5%. National health is going to require people to pay more on visits to doctors and dentists (you pay 30%, the state pays 70%). The national debt is 180% of GDP, the highest of developed nations, according to an earlier SeekingAlpha article. Consumer spending and business outlook are down. Savings rates have, on TV, reportedly begun to fall and credit cards are becoming easy to get. Then there are all the usury companies like Promise lending at 17-21%, legally.

The middle class is aging, simply shrinking demographically. Ever fewer children to replace them. The national population began shrinking earlier this year.

If you visit or live in a Japanese metropolis and work in an international or foreign firm, you see modern, clean, rich. Go visit a provincial capital, rent a car, and drive outside it. Google "Yubari"; there are many more towns just like it.

Obama's Stimulus Package is Morphing Into a Monster

Rather than slash execs' pay, slash government workers' pay and pensions. Slash entitlement spending. End bailouts. Be Darwinist.

Starbucks Not Doing Enough to Heal - Deutsche Bank

Every Starbucks I see here in Japan is usually full of people and no listed drink costs $5. I tall brew-of-the-day is about $3.5. However, I do see lots of students and housewives taking up valuable real estate whlie nursing the cheapest drinks on the menu.

Palm Issues Warning for Q2; Is the End Near?

I love my Palm, but its management has been incompetent for years, killing an improved OS before jumping on the Linux bandwagon to start on another OS from scratch. I hate to say it, but Palm has seemingly been trying to kill itself for years and accordingly deserves wish fulfilment.

American Gloom Is Not the Gloomiest

Japanese are loving the currently powerful yen and buying lots of forex because they expect the yen (and their economy) crash once the US starts to recover late next year. There are two online forex trading companies advertising on TV. The currency exchange desks in banks that allow it are busy, some with queues. Converting once-again-muscular foreign currencies into re-wimpified JPY is widlley expected to be profitable here. Business sentiment in Japan is way down, part-timers are being cut, and the standard year-end salary bonus is under fire.

Economies Improve in Three States - How Can We Copy Them?

Lots of good quaity homes mainly in the non-DNC-majority counties of the Midwest for much less than $100K and built to last, unlike the shoddy housing boom stock with its vinyl siding already peeling off and turning into Section 8 and HUD. There are good jobs in some of these Midwestern places you've flown over, too. But the residents are, you know, veritable zoo specimens that Mr. Obama explained to as clinging to religion, clutching guns, and turning to xenophobia in ignorant primal rage. They're gauche, think differently (even from their neighbors sometimes), have children, like low taxes (but will happily take gov't handouts paid for by others), and produce tangibles (and are likely latte-intolerant, so stay on the costly statist Left Coast, thank you).

Our Growing Inactive Population: Demographics and the Economy

Similar things are playing out here in Japan, where out-of-wedlock births are low (and remain taboo, despite the influence of Western movies and certain domestic stars). The government wastes money, the population ages without producing, and Japan is increasingly influenced by Western saring-and-caring ed school indoctrination. There's little immigration (and what does occur is usually a Japanese farmer marrying a more culturally compatible Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, or (less so) Filipina), but significant corporate and government debt and a touchingly naive belief that the national pension scheme will provide for one and all, even when there's nobody of working age around to pay for it. Who will you rent to or take in as a boarder when the national population is shriking, your national pension checks are reduced or quit coming, no company will hire you because they pay by age, and you used all your earnings to buy a condo that was probably shabbily bulit or its upkeep depends on a residents' council that requires X number of residents' votes, yet repeatedly fails to get it, thus locking in stagnation and decay?

Live cheap, save, and try to get a side business going. You're unlikely to age discriminate against yourself.

Will This Be Japan's Longest Running Recession?

Yes, it is. It's also been ¥170 (or so) to ride the Sapporo subway since 1994. Prices that don't go up or down can be nice.

The Yen Is Due for a Fall

Japan Post has been "privatized," like all the national universities here. Yet every university, public and private still sucks in Ministry of Ed funds; nothing seems ever to be truly completely privatized.

It's nice to be holding yen now, but I don't know for how much longer. There are two online forex firms advertizing heavily on TV on the Tokyo area. People are lining up at banks--it's been on national news--to buy apparently cheap forex in banks in expectation of a profitable reversal later.

No Real Estate Bubble in Central U.S.

Ah, don't believe the hype.

The Perfect Storm: Semi-Annual Economic Review

As someone working in Japan and being paid in yen, I am currently pleased with the yen's strength, but I fear your long-term view of Japan is correct. I don't know how much longer its decline can, however, remain graceful. Increasing numbers of the elderly are turning to shoplifting, and a few have committed violent acts of crime to be imprisoned where they will be fed and taken care of for free.

Rubin's Teflon Finally Wears Off

I'm waiting to see whether Rubin will get a position of power in the oncoming administration.