> Yeah, but doesn't that mean you're [Japan] just a fat, atrophying
> rentier?
Precisely. It's quite the, shall we say, global contradiction, no? Japan's stagnation in the Nineties makes no sense from the industrialist point of view, but it sure makes a lot of sense from the rentier point of view. You throttle domestic demand, run a tight currency, accumulate overseas wealth... I'm beginning to suspect Wall Street's condemnation of Japan Inc. amounts to a bad case of Rentier Envy.
-- Dennis