Nomura Wins Sad-Sack Bank of the Week After Overpaying on Court Loss to FHFA, Having Bond Traders Indicted
So yesterday was a bad day if you were a Japanese bank with stubborn executives.
Read more...Category Archives: Japan
Deflation and Money
Deflation is a threat to the macroeconomy. Japan had suffered from deflation for more than a decade, and now, Europe is facing it. To combat deflation under the zero interest bound, the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank have resorted to quantitative easing, or increasing the money supply. This column explores its effectiveness, through the application of novel methods to distinguish signals from noises.
Read more...Entering the Nuclear Age, Body by Body The Nagasaki Experience
I felt I had not adequately commemorated the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and am putting up this offering to make up for that lapse.
Read more...Winning in Maui: TPP Ministerial Negotiations Fail, with No Date Set for the Next Round
Winning a battle in the long campaign against TPP: It was “domestic politics” that preserved our national sovereignty
Read more...Good News on TPP, as Senate Passes Fast Track Bill with Human Trafficking Poison Pill
Revenge is a dish best served cold. Senator Bob Menendez just served an even bigger plate than he intended via an amendment to Obama’s Fast Track bill that thanks to some Republican help, didn’t get modified into mere symbolism. Ooops!
Read more...Will the TransPacific Partnership Agreement Go into the Deep Freeze?
The TransPacific Partnership is far from a done deal,. Delay in securing Congressional approval for Fast Track has high odds of throwing a fatal wrench in the overseas timing.
Read more...Give the Democratic Trade Turncoats Hell Over Fast Track Vote
The real fight against Fast Track authorization will take place in the House. but the Senate sellouts should be made to feel the wrath of their constituents.
Read more...Obama Bribes Abe to Support the TPP by Unleashing Japanese Military
Obama’s bribe to Abe, of a more muscular Japanese military, has won him over but won’t play as well in Japan and will go down worse in China.
Read more...Satyajit Das: Two Views of Japan’s Setting Sun
Das discusses two recent books on Japan, and both provide windows on how Japan is coping with its now lost two decades. One of them is by Tag Murphy, who I met in my days in Japan and has long been a very insightful commentator. As I said at the Atlantic Economy conference, rather than trying to “jump start the economy,” which would take more radical restructuring than they are willing to engage in, the top wealthy might be better served to worry about managing low growth better. And for its many flaws, egalitarian Japan has muddled through a far more severe bubble and bust with more grace than we have.
Read more...Robert Parenteau: The Large Fly in Krugman’s New Keynesian Soup
Why New Keynesians look a lot like Friedmaniacs.
Read more...How the Scammers Behind Virgin Gold Mining Corporation Bit Off More Than They Could Chew (I)
First in a series of posts exploring Virgin Gold, an immense ($2Bn?) pyramid scheme with a messy aftermath
Read more...Is the TransPacific Partnership Being Brought Back From the Dead?
With a new Republican Congress, and Obama himself a Republican who occasionally wears Democratic clothing, the Administration is making noise that the TransPacific Partnership and its ugly sister, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, are moving forward in a serious way.
But the Administration tried that sort of messaging last year to keep up a sense of inevitability about these regulation-gutting, mislabeleed trade deals, when reality was very different. So where do things stand?
Read more...Can Abenomics Revive Japan’s Economy?
Most readers are skeptical of Abenomics, and for good reason. This post gives an accessible discussion of why it has not worked.
Read more...Japanese Politics: Still 猫に小判
Yves here. Readers asked our Japan-watcher Clive for his take on the snap election in Japan, where voting takes place this Sunday. Contrary to the norm for Japanese politics, there may be less here than meets the eye. In addition, Clive provides an update on Japanese media and official statements on the TransPacific Partnership negotiations.
Read more...Why is Anyone Surprised that Abenomics Failed?
In case you managed to miss it, there’s been a fair bit of hand-wringing over the fact that Japan has fallen back into a recession despite the supposedly heroic intervention called Abenomics, whose central feature was QE on steroids.
But Japan of all places should know that relying on the wealth effect to spur growth has always bombed in the long term.
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