The Panic Spreads

[Michael Perelman]

I have long been impressed by the way Japan has contained the depression os far.
Pen-l had a Japanese correspondent who explained a couple of years ago that the
statistical picture was too rosy, but still ....

Doug Henwood wrote:


> Chris Doss quoted:
>
> >The Panic Spreads
> >Benjamin Fulford, Forbes Global, 02.18.02
> >
> >You can no longer safely shrug off Japan's economic crisis. It just might
> >drag the world into a depression.
> >The world--including even the previously sanguine Japanese--is now catching
> >on to the fact that Japan's 12-year slump has deteriorated into a full-blown
> >crisis, threatening a wild global ride. Falloffs in various indicators in
> >the world's second-largest economy resemble the plunge of such countries as
> >the U.S. into the Great Depression of the 1930s.
>
> Japan has a problem, but really, this is just a tad overblown.
> Between 1929 and 1933, U.S. real GDP fell by 27%, employment fell by
> 24%, and the unemployment rate rose from 3% to 25%. Japan had
> (weakly) positive GDP growth from mid-1999 to mid-2001, and it fell
> at a 2% annual rate in 01Q3. Unemployment is a bit over 5%, up from
> the mid-3% range in 1998. Japan's in a recession within a longer
> stagnation, but hold the 1930s precedents until they're really needed.
>
> Doug

--

Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu