Japan is in worse than a deflationary trap

From marketwatch.com

A couple years ago, an American journalist 10 years resident in Tokyo offered a provocative assessment: Japan, he said, had decided to gracefully withdraw from the world stage. This month, during my first return to Japan in a decade, I put that assertion to an English friend who had lived even longer in Tokyo. “That’s about right,” he said, “battered by deflation and a overly strong currency, the Japanese have concluded that they can’t compete with a rising China and are withdrawing into themselves These startling conclusions prompted a reflection to a visit 29 years earlier. In the autumn of 1983, I ... (full story)