C. Redmond wrote:
>
>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
>
Okay, is there some data we don't know about that indicates the Japanese rentiers are getting richer than the American ones? It seems that Japanese banks are in trouble and American banks are doing well. The comparisons are similar for investment banks and other financial institutions, seemingly.
Japan has got a lot of things going for it - a fantastic industrial economy and a terrific balance of trade and payments. In a system other than a capitalist system that would be all that's needed (essentially, but let's not quibble at the moment). The problem is that Japan is entirely capitalist and they are starved both for credit and the initiative among capitalists to do something more profitable with the credit they have. If world socialism were to suddenly be put into place, the Japanese would probably be the most successful people on earth. Since there is no immediate danger of that (much to my dismay, although it's unclear that there is even a consensus as to what world socialism would look like), the Japanese have and will, it seems, continue to have some serious problems. Too much of that hard-earned industrial wealth is going the way of all flesh.
peace