Henry Kissinger once said (I am paraphrasing) - you be US's enemy but you be its ally at your own peril.
Post 90s Japan lost its identity and autonomy to US hegemony. There is a great book called Princess of Yen that outlines how US with its highest intelligence operative basically orchestrated the fall of Japan from a net surplus in the 90s to a highest debt-to-GDP sub-servant state of US hegemony to the point the survival of your currency requires US intervention. Japan has been also one of the largest buyers of treasury when there are much higher return elsewhere.
Holy telephone game... the Kissinger quote you are referring to was about if they let the South Vietnamese leader fall, then the world would take away the message that we wouldn't support our allies.
Instead we get this butchered caricature all over the internet
Every country in the world is trying to solve the same problem: how to preserve economic growth despite a shrinking population and declining productivity.
The USA and western Europe chose to resolve it with immigration.
Japan & (some of) Eastern Europe chose to resolve it without immigration.
Japan is the economic canary because they had a 15+ year head start, and had the best discipline with immigration control. Their economic indicators are trailing-signals of the demographic freefall. Debt can only patch it for so long.
> Every country in the world is trying to solve the same problem: how to preserve economic growth ...
Why is economic growth needed?
Because politicians whored for votes and "kept" their promises by creating ever more public debt, spending more than they made (usually while lining up their pockets and the pockets of their relatives, including their mistresses).
Politicians are so corrupt and so incompetent that none of them would even be accepted as president of a table tennis club.
Capitalism doesn't need endless growth to work. It's governments spending more than what they should that do.
If there's no economic growth in an aging country, that requires everyone to accept a gradual decline in their standard of living, which is an extraordinarily unpopular idea. (I've talked to people who say they're OK with it, but in my experience, their idea has always been that we'll sacrifice the goods and services they don't personally care about to ensure the ones they do care about remain accessible and affordable.)
I think the US helped Japan so that they wouldn't start dumping US treasuries to support the yen, making our already bad situation worse. I don't expect it to work as we are sitting down to a banquet of consequences.
It seems we are not able to talk about the economic effects of this era of capitalism as almost our entire monetary and economic theory seems to be defined by two events and institutions compeltely lack the ability to see anything else
1) The oil crisis of the 70s, inflation of getting off the gold standard
2) The invisible productivity print and GDP of the 90s due to the internet
These two solutions seem to be the only thing our current wonks can imagine as a solve for current crisis that are entirely different and need to be analyzed entirely on their own terms
For example
1) America printed 70% more currency over covid yet somehow did not experience anywhere near the global devaluation it should have (even if we experienced INTERNAL inflation) resulting in an extremely "monaco like" economy where everything is now hyper expensive and economy seems to be 'melting up.'
2) Nations like japan would dont run the world currency are experiencing MASSIVE devaluation while doing the same things, trapping their citizens inside their nation and cutting them off from global trade and weakening their borrowing position
These are net new scenarios the FED refuses to have a new playbook to deal with, and its an impressive illustration of our so called 'experts' complete lack of knowledge of what to do if it wasn't already written down in a book.
i, in no way, implied it was an acronym which would require periods (in this enviroment) if we are being a pedantic as you. Simply a stylistic choice to cause it to read clearly and stand out.
Your comment is, in its entirety, meaningless and a net negative on our community with its intellectual dishonesty, and beyond that complete inability to interact with the content.
We are all dumber having read it, may god have mercy on your soul.
P.S: that's not talking about a country like France, where the IMF shall have to intervene soon as public spendings are totally out of control and the public debt is running wild.
Fair question, we are more on a edge (which who can say when truly til after the fact) but what I see as someone who has privilged position and data into global trade, GDP mandates, and monetary policy and its effects on the private sector is this:
We are locked in a GDP fight globally between powers, triggering real world trade wars and hot wars based on a few hidden factors:
1) A far worse fertiltiy crisis than is publicly known (including timelines to its real effects being far closer)
2) An overabbundance of currency needing to find return in increasingly speculative arenas, an a levered debt system built that REQUIRES that return or risks catastrophic failure
3) A GDP fight globally where in the first to falter triggers a hot war
4) A collapse in social contract between workers and capital class, where in capital class have now publically stated they believe workers are no longer a neccesarry class (contradicting the real terms of point 1)
5) A set of economic rules that are being broken, sending us into the 'no playbook' zone of global stability
This is an ultra toxic mix that is showing up all at once.
Author here. Everything is written by me, by hand. What makes you think it's AI slop?
I see you edited your comment. Yes, we use LLMs to monitor news --- otherwise we wouldn't be able to read Japanese news sites or policy documents. However, the articles and analysis are written "manually". I take this very seriously --- the only "AI" is spelling + grammar checking.
I see. Well, feel free to disagree with my insights and ideas; it makes us all better for it.
But refrain from unfounded allegations of AI slop or incompetence. Gatekeeping is even worse.
EDIT: you keep editing your comments. I'm going to stop engaging with you since one can't even have a linear discussion. Good luck with your research and ideas. If you are an expert on Japan, I encourage you to share your views in the general comments here.
lol a website about "Create your own event-powered feeds, newsletters, & risk maps about topics that matter to your business, big or small" that decided to blog about Japan
Henry Kissinger once said (I am paraphrasing) - you be US's enemy but you be its ally at your own peril.
Post 90s Japan lost its identity and autonomy to US hegemony. There is a great book called Princess of Yen that outlines how US with its highest intelligence operative basically orchestrated the fall of Japan from a net surplus in the 90s to a highest debt-to-GDP sub-servant state of US hegemony to the point the survival of your currency requires US intervention. Japan has been also one of the largest buyers of treasury when there are much higher return elsewhere.
This is not sustainable and everyone knows it.
https://robinjbrooks.substack.com/p/japans-interest-rate-dis...
Holy telephone game... the Kissinger quote you are referring to was about if they let the South Vietnamese leader fall, then the world would take away the message that we wouldn't support our allies.
Instead we get this butchered caricature all over the internet
economics < productivity < demographics (primarily ) & technology (secondarily)
Every country in the world is trying to solve the same problem: how to preserve economic growth despite a shrinking population and declining productivity.
The USA and western Europe chose to resolve it with immigration.
Japan & (some of) Eastern Europe chose to resolve it without immigration.
Japan is the economic canary because they had a 15+ year head start, and had the best discipline with immigration control. Their economic indicators are trailing-signals of the demographic freefall. Debt can only patch it for so long.
> Every country in the world is trying to solve the same problem: how to preserve economic growth ...
Why is economic growth needed?
Because politicians whored for votes and "kept" their promises by creating ever more public debt, spending more than they made (usually while lining up their pockets and the pockets of their relatives, including their mistresses).
Politicians are so corrupt and so incompetent that none of them would even be accepted as president of a table tennis club.
Capitalism doesn't need endless growth to work. It's governments spending more than what they should that do.
If there's no economic growth in an aging country, that requires everyone to accept a gradual decline in their standard of living, which is an extraordinarily unpopular idea. (I've talked to people who say they're OK with it, but in my experience, their idea has always been that we'll sacrifice the goods and services they don't personally care about to ensure the ones they do care about remain accessible and affordable.)
I think the US helped Japan so that they wouldn't start dumping US treasuries to support the yen, making our already bad situation worse. I don't expect it to work as we are sitting down to a banquet of consequences.
It seems we are not able to talk about the economic effects of this era of capitalism as almost our entire monetary and economic theory seems to be defined by two events and institutions compeltely lack the ability to see anything else
1) The oil crisis of the 70s, inflation of getting off the gold standard
2) The invisible productivity print and GDP of the 90s due to the internet
These two solutions seem to be the only thing our current wonks can imagine as a solve for current crisis that are entirely different and need to be analyzed entirely on their own terms
For example
1) America printed 70% more currency over covid yet somehow did not experience anywhere near the global devaluation it should have (even if we experienced INTERNAL inflation) resulting in an extremely "monaco like" economy where everything is now hyper expensive and economy seems to be 'melting up.'
2) Nations like japan would dont run the world currency are experiencing MASSIVE devaluation while doing the same things, trapping their citizens inside their nation and cutting them off from global trade and weakening their borrowing position
These are net new scenarios the FED refuses to have a new playbook to deal with, and its an impressive illustration of our so called 'experts' complete lack of knowledge of what to do if it wasn't already written down in a book.
> FED
You are aware this isn't an acronym and you mean "Fed"? I don't know how seriously to take your opinions about macroeconomics.
i, in no way, implied it was an acronym which would require periods (in this enviroment) if we are being a pedantic as you. Simply a stylistic choice to cause it to read clearly and stand out.
Your comment is, in its entirety, meaningless and a net negative on our community with its intellectual dishonesty, and beyond that complete inability to interact with the content.
We are all dumber having read it, may god have mercy on your soul.
I’m not even the OP but you need to relax buddy, it’s not that serious.
If anything I feel dumber for having read your comment here. Everyone knows you’re just trying to do a cute bit from a movie with that quote.
What's the crisis? I mean, what makes you feel there is a crisis? I know social media can make anyone feel extremely anxious these days, but for real?
> I mean, what makes you feel there is a crisis?
U.S. M2 money supply tripling in 15 years. US gov public debt more than tripling over the same period.
People from the middle class being unable to buy a house.
The money printer has been going brrrrrr since a very long time and everything got badly distorted.
My bet is that when the next financial crisis hits, we'll see helicopter Ben and hear the brrrrr again.
The crisis in one webpage:
https://www.usdebtclock.org/
P.S: that's not talking about a country like France, where the IMF shall have to intervene soon as public spendings are totally out of control and the public debt is running wild.
Fair question, we are more on a edge (which who can say when truly til after the fact) but what I see as someone who has privilged position and data into global trade, GDP mandates, and monetary policy and its effects on the private sector is this:
We are locked in a GDP fight globally between powers, triggering real world trade wars and hot wars based on a few hidden factors:
1) A far worse fertiltiy crisis than is publicly known (including timelines to its real effects being far closer)
2) An overabbundance of currency needing to find return in increasingly speculative arenas, an a levered debt system built that REQUIRES that return or risks catastrophic failure
3) A GDP fight globally where in the first to falter triggers a hot war
4) A collapse in social contract between workers and capital class, where in capital class have now publically stated they believe workers are no longer a neccesarry class (contradicting the real terms of point 1)
5) A set of economic rules that are being broken, sending us into the 'no playbook' zone of global stability
This is an ultra toxic mix that is showing up all at once.
[flagged]
Author here. Everything is written by me, by hand. What makes you think it's AI slop?
I see you edited your comment. Yes, we use LLMs to monitor news --- otherwise we wouldn't be able to read Japanese news sites or policy documents. However, the articles and analysis are written "manually". I take this very seriously --- the only "AI" is spelling + grammar checking.
[flagged]
I see. Well, feel free to disagree with my insights and ideas; it makes us all better for it.
But refrain from unfounded allegations of AI slop or incompetence. Gatekeeping is even worse.
EDIT: you keep editing your comments. I'm going to stop engaging with you since one can't even have a linear discussion. Good luck with your research and ideas. If you are an expert on Japan, I encourage you to share your views in the general comments here.
lol a website about "Create your own event-powered feeds, newsletters, & risk maps about topics that matter to your business, big or small" that decided to blog about Japan