April 25, 2001
Purging the Rottenness
By PAUL KRUGMAN
T he world's second-largest economy has its next prime minister, and
hope is in the air. Junichiro Koizumi doesn't look or sound like a
conventional Japanese politician. He could turn out to be Japan's
Franklin Roosevelt. Alas, judging from his platform he seems more
likely to be Japan's Herbert Hoover.
Mr. Koizumi has not given many specifics. But what he has said amounts
to a promise of blood, toil, tears and sweat or anyway their financial
equivalents. "There will be companies going bankrupt and increased
unemployment," he has admitted. "But if we are fearful of
unemployment, we will never see the recovery of the Japanese economy."
It's a hard-headed and courageous position. It is also reminiscent of
the disastrous advice given by Andrew Mellon, Hoover's Treasury
secretary: "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmers,
liquidate real estate. . . . It will purge the rottenness out of the
system. . . . Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will
pick up the wrecks. . . .."
What was wrong with Mellon's advice, aside from its callousness? He
confused supply with demand.
When an economy's production is limited by its capacity to produce the
normal state of affairs it is important to make sure that scarce
resources like capital are used efficiently, put to work where they
yield the highest return. Japan's postal savings system, which
channels money into public works projects that have little if any
social payoff, is monumentally inefficient; so is the practice of
rolling over the debts of companies that will never regain
profitability and hence keeping capital employed producing goods
nobody wants. So if Japan's production were limited by its capacity,
Mr. Koizumi's proposals to privatize postal savings and force banks to
write off bad loans would be right on target.
But Japan isn't limited by its capacity. It is plagued by chronic
insufficiency of demand that is, consumers and businesses are
unwilling to buy as much as the economy is already capable of
producing. And in such an economy, attempts to increase efficiency
often do more harm than good. Freeing capital by reducing the budget
deficit and closing down unprofitable businesses sounds great but if
that freed capital is simply put under the mattress (or stored in a
bank vault), the result is not faster growth but a deeper slump.
Now there are many pundits who claim that such a slump is exactly what
Japan needs, that purging the system will create the conditions for a
future surge in demand. But why? If the economy remains depressed, why
should either consumers or businesses start spending? Banks, in
particular, are already awash in cash, but cannot find good new loans
to make. Why would forcing them to write off bad old loans make any
difference?
Nonetheless, Mr. Koizumi is right about one thing: Japan cannot go on
like this. Swelling public debt will eventually threaten the
government's solvency; the festering financial problems of the banks
will soon require a government bailout that will swell that debt even
further. Something must be done. But the actions Mr. Koizumi has
proposed could tip Japan into full-blown depression.
There is an answer to this dilemma, one that has become almost
orthodoxy among economists who have tried to think seriously about
Japan's plight. This answer involves unconventional monetary
expansion, with the Bank of Japan buying dollars, euros and long-term
government bonds; it also involves accepting and indeed promoting mild
inflation and a weak yen. I could explain why this would probably
work, but what's the point? It's not about to happen.
For the real tragedy right now is that however innovative and open-
minded Mr. Koizumi may be, he will fail unless other important players
mainly the Bank of Japan, but also the U.S. Treasury Department are
prepared to learn from Andrew Mellon's mistake. And all the evidence
is that they are not. The head of the Bank of Japan insists that the
country's continuing slump is the result of inadequate reform that is,
insufficient purging of the rottenness. And although the details are
in dispute, the U.S. Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, appears to have
warned Japan not to let the yen weaken too much.
Poor Japan. It is the victim of those who refuse to learn from the
past, and thereby condemn others to repeat it.
Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company