Japan's soaring public debt

Chris Burford cburford at gn.apc.org
Wed Sep 1 15:52:09 PDT 1999


At 09:48 01/09/99 -0400, you wrote:
>[From today's NY Times. Amazing -- why hasn't the Japanese economy
>gotten more stimulus from all this debt?]

My sense is this is a pretty muddled and empiricist article, but I am willing to be proved wrong.

I also suspect the hidden coded language whereby western capitalists try to false-foot and embarrass Japanese capitalists, but subtly so it is hard to put your finger on exactly how the massive rivalry between the two blocs is panning out.

The timing of the article is ironical considering how the US dollar has been falling again markedly against the yen. I even think it is legitimate to ask whether the author is betting on it shifting sentiment in the reverse direction by a few points. Billions of dollars hang on these currency fluctuations.

Most of all I suspect the author's lamentations about Japanese "soaring public debt" when it has nothing to say about the massive global debt of the USA, which is running on free credit from the rest of the world. Perhaps the yen is staying up at present without visible means of support because there is even more doubt about the fundamentals of the dollars position if its true position was exposed.

But perhaps for that we need the IMF to start issuing global currency. Which of course would be unthinkable for the USA, and perhaps in the USA.

Chris Burford

London



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