Yes more free money for Japan... Trillions of yen for everyone

[Sig]

The whole democracy thing has worked reasonably well since 1776. As much cannot be said for mainstream economic thought, which by and large has led to persistent booms and busts with the latest bust resulting in the hollowing of the middle class, a huge increase in the number of people on foodstamps, stagnation in incomes, persistent unemployment, stagnation in GDP growth ad nauseam. And the worst is yet to come. Do you know what conditions are like on the ground in Japan?

Do you have the honesty to admit that the ideas put out by policy makers and academia stink? I'm talking real world here, not ivory towers where academics are trying to impress other academics with a haze of equations, as Krugman, of all people, admitted himself.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...n-follows-a-long-road-of-packages-that-failed

Pretty sure you missed my point. The sky has supposedly been falling on Japan for 25 years and yet it remains more prosperous than most of the rest of the world. Most of us change our thesis on something when our predictions don't come true for a few years, almost anyone would after a few decades. Do you have a timeframe after which you'll admit that a continued 1st world Japan indicates the sky isn't falling, or would you still be claiming it 50 years from now, 100 years, 200 years if you lived that long? I just want to know what your breakpoint is on admitting a prediction didn't pan out? It's a rather simple question, isn't it?
BTW yes I have been "on the ground in Japan in the last 3 years. And Greece, and several South and Central American countries. Have you? Japan is a far more pleasant and prosperous place, to claim otherwise is pretty absurd if you've pretty much ever left N America in the past 25 years.

 

[der_kommissar]

I'm going to assume you missed the "Oh wait" part.

No, you got me with the Jack Benny reference...You are well into the AARP years.

 

[der_kommissar]

Pretty sure you missed my point. The sky has supposedly been falling on Japan for 25 years and yet it remains more prosperous than most of the rest of the world. Most of us change our thesis on something when our predictions don't come true for a few years, almost anyone would after a few decades. Do you have a timeframe after which you'll admit that a continued 1st world Japan indicates the sky isn't falling, or would you still be claiming it 50 years from now, 100 years, 200 years if you lived that long? I just want to know what your breakpoint is on admitting a prediction didn't pan out? It's a rather simple question, isn't it?
BTW yes I have been "on the ground in Japan in the last 3 years. And Greece, and several South and Central American countries. Have you? Japan is a far more pleasant and prosperous place, to claim otherwise is pretty absurd if you've pretty much ever left N America in the past 25 years.

You are treading in very dangerous waters Sig...You are making this "pleasant and first world" argument about Japan vs South and Central American countries without understanding the nuance of your arguments.

 

[Sig]

You are treading in very dangerous waters Sig...You are making this "pleasant and first world" argument about Japan vs South and Central American countries without understanding the nuance of your arguments.

Nuance is what it's all about my friend, perhaps you're simply agreeing with my earlier thread in this post where I criticized a black and white approach? If you got that you might have caught on to why I included Greece in there as well, although I also happened to just be truthfully listing places I'd been in the past few years to defend against this anti-intelligence "ivory tower" argument. How about you, you have any first hand experience in how Japan is such a horrible place because of these 25 years of "failed" policies? Any insight on how many years one has to be wrong before realizing it? Any other "dangerous waters" I need to be warned about?

 

[Maverick1]

Pretty sure you missed my point. The sky has supposedly been falling on Japan for 25 years and yet it remains more prosperous than most of the rest of the world. Most of us change our thesis on something when our predictions don't come true for a few years, almost anyone would after a few decades. Do you have a timeframe after which you'll admit that a continued 1st world Japan indicates the sky isn't falling, or would you still be claiming it 50 years from now, 100 years, 200 years if you lived that long? I just want to know what your breakpoint is on admitting a prediction didn't pan out? It's a rather simple question, isn't it?
BTW yes I have been "on the ground in Japan in the last 3 years. And Greece, and several South and Central American countries. Have you? Japan is a far more pleasant and prosperous place, to claim otherwise is pretty absurd if you've pretty much ever left N America in the past 25 years.

Your relative argument is a lame copout. People in Japan don't wake up going "Oh man, I haven't been able to save up enough for my pension, but jolly ole me, I'm not Greek! Hurray!"

Did you read the article? Here's an excerpt:

"The nation has had extra budgets every year since at least 1993, and even with that extra spending, it has still had six recessions, an entrenched period of deflation, soaring debt and a rapidly aging population that has left the world’s third-largest economy still struggling to get off the floor."

Also, national output is down 30% in the last 5 years.

Is the above how you define prosperity? Yes or no? The above is the fruit of New Keynesian/Monetarist thinking from the likes of Bernanke and Krugman.

Re the timeline: my view is that Japan is on the road to collapse within the next 5-10 years if it does not correct course. There was no reason to expect a collapse even in the last 10 years, because the end game had not been reached. Now that the BOJ owns 40% of JGBs and people are talking about perpetual zero coupon bonds we know that debt monetization is next, which means an eventual complete loss of confidence in the yen.

And btw re ivory tower academics, there's no anti-intelligence argument here, only an anti-stupidity one.

 

[der_kommissar]

Nuance is what it's all about my friend, perhaps you're simply agreeing with my earlier thread in this post where I criticized a black and white approach? If you got that you might have caught on to why I included Greece in there as well, although I also happened to just be truthfully listing places I'd been in the past few years to defend against this anti-intelligence "ivory tower" argument. How about you, you have any first hand experience in how Japan is such a horrible place because of these 25 years of "failed" policies? Any insight on how many years one has to be wrong before realizing it? Any other "dangerous waters" I need to be warned about?

As illustrated in Maverick1's post, if this monetary policy is such a "success" (or in your twisted wordplay, the rest of us are completely "wrong"), then why is it always necessary to "up the ante" and there is never a start/end date to these remedies...You ask us when we admit that we are "wrong", well how about yourself? If it's so great, then why is the country stuck in such a perpetual economic malaise, the central bank has to resort to ever greater interventions just to keep the "wheel spinning"...

Back to your "Japan is still first world"...Again nuance...It's about the people, the work ethic, the culture...

 

[Martinghoul]

The whole democracy thing has worked reasonably well since 1776. As much cannot be said for mainstream economic thought, which by and large has led to persistent booms and busts with the latest bust resulting in the hollowing of the middle class, a huge increase in the number of people on foodstamps, stagnation in incomes, persistent unemployment, stagnation in GDP growth ad nauseam.

This is emotional talk and, as such, it's just patently untrue... Whatever drawbacks mainstream economic thought has (and it has many), one thing you cannot possibly claim is that there has been no progress over the years. Here is something for your reference:
http://web.stanford.edu/~chadj/facts.pdf

As to your reference to "persistent booms and busts", there is ample evidence to suggest that these were not less and often a lot more violent in the past than they have been recently.

Obviously, nobody knows what the future holds and there could be a sh1tstorm right around the corner. However, as Sig says, at which point do you give up on these dire predictions?

 

[Sig]

The comments from der_kommissar and Maverick1 are the intellectual equivalent of a plumber pontificating on bridge building and what idiots those mechanical engineers in their ivory towers are with their equations and maths and all that. What I love about the anti-intellectual arguments from those who know next to nothing about what topic at hand is that they start with "You ivory tower types with your statistics, have you even been there/done that" comments. Then, when it turns out you have been there/done that (and often they haven't, actually), they turn to quoting a bunch of economics statistics!

 

[Sig]

As illustrated in Maverick1's post, if this monetary policy is such a "success" (or in your twisted wordplay, the rest of us are completely "wrong"), then why is it always necessary to "up the ante" and there is never a start/end date to these remedies...You ask us when we admit that we are "wrong", well how about yourself? If it's so great, then why is the country stuck in such a perpetual economic malaise, the central bank has to resort to ever greater interventions just to keep the "wheel spinning"...

Back to your "Japan is still first world"...Again nuance...It's about the people, the work ethic, the culture...

Since you refuse to answer the question I'll be happy to. When Japan's GDP per capita falls below the rest of the first world countries I'll be the first to say I'm wrong, or more importantly learn from the information in front of me and change my hypothesis to reflect what I know. Much like if I predicted in 1990 that Japan's economic failure was imminent, and again in 2000, and again in 2010... I would have long ago incorporated that evidence into what I know about economics and stopped insisting that the end is near. Scientific method and all that.
By the way, I don't think that word "nuance" means what you think it does. I think the word you're looking for may be something like eugenics?

 

[Martinghoul]

Since you refuse to answer the question I'll be happy to. When Japan's GDP falls below the rest of the first world countries I'll be the first to say I'm wrong, or more importantly learn from the information in front of me and change my hypothesis to reflect what I know. Much like if I predicted in 1990 that Japan's economic failure was imminent, and again in 2000, and again in 2010... I would have long ago incorporated that evidence into what I know about economics and stopped insisting that the end is near. Scientific method and all that.
By the way, I don't think that word "nuance" means what you think it does. I think the word you're looking for may be something like eugenics?

Let me add something to this...

It's a pretty well-accepted idea that the best way to determine whether a statement is "scientific" or not is to figure out whether it's falsifiable. Falsifiability of the sort that Sig demonstrates above is crucial if you want to have a meaningful discussion.