The original article title is "Why Japan is Doomed (and the U.S. and the E.U. too)". The Greek debt crises seems to be looming in the future for Japan, the U.S., and the E.U. as well. There doesn't seem to be very many serious plans to stop the accruing debt, and those who think that the debt is no problem are addressed in the article:<p><i>Those in denial about Japan's reliance on ballooning debt to fund its status quo (and on America's exact same reliance) basically claim that "It can't happen because it hasn't happened."</i>
If the US, EU, and Japan are doomed, who isn't? I don't think the answer is China and India. China's plan seems to be to lurch full steam ahead (no pun intended) into our style of entirely non-sustainable petroleum and coal fueled over-consumption.
Will someone be able to exploit this for profit?
I haven't enough macro-economy knowledge to evaluate this, but looks likely.
Sadly, i haven't seen yet any article on future scenarios in case of a global crisis caused by multiple nations going to default... any interesting link about this will be highly appreciated.
We're borrowing 43% of our budget? Talk about unsustainable.<p>I would seriously make plans for when the US is forced to stop this destructive pattern. Its going to be ugly.
The part I don't understand is why Japanese citizens would accept such low returns on their investment for so many years, when so many investments outside of Japanese government debt would give them higher yields.<p>Is it a cultural thing? Is it just pure altruism? Do they want to support their government that much that they're willing to ignore better investments for their savings?
"Millions of Japanese aged 25 to 34 toil as temps or contract employees-- up from 1.5 million 10 years ago, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. These workers tend to earn about one-third the typical "salaryman" wages that their fathers earned"<p>I lived in Tokyo last year in a cheap apartment with alot of young Japanese people, and I was very surprised by their lack of work ethic/prospect from my first time in Japan. They would bounce from temp work (typing) to temp work (waiter) to temp work (salesperson walking everywhere in tokyo door to door), quitting every 2-3 weeks. They would sometimes sleep in and not show up for interview, and wouldn't even call to reschedule. The way they would quit a job they didn't like is by....not showing up anymore. Keep in mind these are people that went to pretty decent universities in Japan, and speak ok english. And when they do get a full time job offer, they would have to wait almost half a year to a year to start working (which I would think depress their morale).