From Japan’s Slump in 1990s, Lessons for U.S.

I don't think the US will follow Japan's route of a very long and painful recession, but it is interesting to learn from possible parrallels.

Check out the NYTimes article



Japan's economic expansion after WW2 was seen as a model. In the 80s, Japan was at the centre of a real-estate boom summarized by this funny fact: "by 1989, the value world investors placed on the land on which the Imperial Palace resides was said to be equal to the value of all the real-estate in California!" as reported by Fed Chairman Greenspan in his book The Age of Turbulence. Japan banks became heavily invested in loans backed by real estate as collateral. Then came a stock-market and real-estate crash. When house prices started to plunge, the banks should have called the loans, but, for fear of losing face, the bankers restrained from doing it. It subsequently took years - 15 years of economic stagnation from 1990 to 2005 - and many governments bailouts before real estate prices stabilized and the banking system returned to normal lending.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

French industry's competitiveness

The Gallois report about the French industry's competitiveness has just been made public (links here ) and received a lot of publicity from the French media. As a trained economist and French patriot, I was eager to read it. The author, a respected businessman - formerly head of aerospace giant EADS -  describes rather briefly the declining state of the French industry over the last ten years, which accounted for 18% of GDP in 2000 and is now down to 12.5%. What are the causes of this decline? The author cites various causes, ranging from product quality, technology, labour flexibility, cost, competition, education and regulation. Standard economic theory says the government should increase labour flexibility, promote competition, support education and enact smart regulation. For example, the Porter Hypothesis (cf Ambec et al 2011 ) states that market-friendly environmental policy can enhance business competitiveness through innovation. What are the main propositions? Create...
Read more

Is the yield curve back to the 1950s-1960s?

Image
In recent years, the yield curve has flattened and shifted downwards. The flattening has received a lot of attention because it is viewed as a recessionary signal. In this article, we argue that the fact that the curve has shifted downwards as well as flattening indicates that the yield curve may have changed regime. This regime shift seems to have been caused by lower inflation expectations and lower risk premia. In an environment of lower inflation and lower risk premia, the yield curve may occasionally invert without signalling a recession as it did in 1966. 1. The recessionary signal Inversions of the yield curve have often been used to predict recessions. The 10-year to 3-month spread between US Treasury yields became briefly negative twice this year in March and the May (figure 1), spurring debate about whether this was signalling a forthcoming recession. The negative spread was mainly the result of a decrease of the 10-year yield – from 2.8 per cent on 1 March to 2.4 per cen...
Read more

Did street unrest damage the outlook for France?

Image
Post date: 11 Feb 2019 As images of unrest in the streets of Paris and other French cities continue to flood in the European media, the data on France contained in our latest global forecast, published last week, painted a subtler but still concerning outlook for the French economy. GDP growth was at 1.5 per cent in 2018 and recent developments suggest that the acceleration in growth in 2019 that we were previously expecting may not occur. We have therefore downgraded our forecast of annual GDP growth from 1.9 to 1.6 per cent in 2019. Turner's famous yellow A broad range of surveys point to a marked and sudden deterioration in the business environment and consumer confidence. The business climate composite indicator, a survey of business managers compiled by INSEE, declined in December 2018 to a two-year low and the composite PMI dropped in December from 54.2 to 48.7, below the 50 mark which indicates expansion. Social protests represented by the ‘gilets jaunes’ movemen...
Read more