Off to play with some grandchildren. Back Sunday, or maybe Saturday night. Meanwhile, the reader is invited to consider whether the "lost decade" in Japan was such a bad thing. Sure, the real estate market tanked and the Nikkei now stands somewhere around 25 percent of its all time high. Yes, the banks, with the backing of the bureaucrats, kept sloshing money around on the ludicrous pretense that they were making good deals.
But for the ordinary working stiff, not a lot changed. Japanese are notoriously careful with their money--still one of the highest savings rates in the world, and they more or less plugged along as they always had.
You do have to wonder where in the devil all that money came from. But in the end, was it such a bad thing?
H/T Joel, who pushed a version of this idea on me a couple of months ago.
1 comment:
In this country it would be a bad thing because so many of the working stiffs are out of work.
Japan has protective tariffs. We have NAFTA. Japan has a deeply ingrained social good ethic. We have Greed is Good.
Yours Crankily,
The New York Crank
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