3 Comments

I benefitted from your excellent analysis and the policy implications of the yield curve. I would request you if you could enlighten the readers on the politics of yield curve and whether it forms part of the long chain of neoliberal trade and finance policies or it is minor hiccup?

Ravi Kanth

Expand full comment

Interesting background.

I was living in Tokyo in the late 90s up to 2001. That was the period following the real estate bubble burst in Japan. There was a stampede of foreign real estate investment bankers into Japan focused on real estate investment opportunities. The investors’ plan was to take advantage of Japan’s vulnerability with the market collapse in order to take ownership of prime Japanese real estate assets—an endeavor that had until then been thwarted by Japan’s resistance to foreign investment.

In cocktail party banter and lunch conversations over burgers and wine at the Tokyo American Club, American banking operatives snickered at Japan’s provincial and old-fashioned approach to their real estate crisis. “They are just pouring money in to delay the crisis, sitting on that rotten egg, hoping one day it will hatch into a beautiful swan (laughter)—whereas, in the US, there would be blood in the streets, followed by a big surge in the market” (laugher)

The Big Opening of the Japanese real estate market to US investment firms didn’t really happen and the stampede of investors moved on to China for the most part. But apparently there’s been an extended period of nest-sitting and tending in Japan. At the same time, the approach of “blood in the streets” hasn’t really been enacted in the COVID economic crisis—yet either.

Perhaps we’re on the precipice of its resurrection.

Clearly, who knows…

Expand full comment

Accountability and consequence. The only two items that ensure leadership will act responsibly. Let's hope more leaders learn this hard lesson. Abe won't have died in vain.It should never come to outright assassination. It's a shame. So many others have screwed over the world and currently are and no one fights back except Vladimir Putin.

Expand full comment