Funny how foreign firms have failed to break into Japan for reasons having nothing to do with regulatory barriers, which calls the logic of “trade” deals like the TPP into question.
Read more...How Japanese Prime Minister Abe’s remarks to the DIet about the TPP reveal a lot about the aims of this deal and its vulnerabilities.
Read more...How the TPP would make financial firms that are “TIBACO” – that is, too interconnected, big, and complex to oversee – even more dangerous.
Read more...Now you can read a translation of the Japanese government’s summary of the TPP.
Read more...US caves to Japan on “beef.” But did they really cave?
Read more...We don’t have the TPP text, ISDS is just as bad as it’s always been, and deals like this have been beaten before.
Read more...So yesterday was a bad day if you were a Japanese bank with stubborn executives.
Read more...Deflation is a threat to the macroeconomy. Japan had suffered from deflation for more than a decade, and now, Europe is facing it. To combat deflation under the zero interest bound, the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank have resorted to quantitative easing, or increasing the money supply. This column explores its effectiveness, through the application of novel methods to distinguish signals from noises.
Read more...I felt I had not adequately commemorated the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and am putting up this offering to make up for that lapse.
Read more...Winning a battle in the long campaign against TPP: It was “domestic politics” that preserved our national sovereignty
Read more...Revenge is a dish best served cold. Senator Bob Menendez just served an even bigger plate than he intended via an amendment to Obama’s Fast Track bill that thanks to some Republican help, didn’t get modified into mere symbolism. Ooops!
Read more...The TransPacific Partnership is far from a done deal,. Delay in securing Congressional approval for Fast Track has high odds of throwing a fatal wrench in the overseas timing.
Read more...The real fight against Fast Track authorization will take place in the House. but the Senate sellouts should be made to feel the wrath of their constituents.
Read more...Obama’s bribe to Abe, of a more muscular Japanese military, has won him over but won’t play as well in Japan and will go down worse in China.
Read more...Das discusses two recent books on Japan, and both provide windows on how Japan is coping with its now lost two decades. One of them is by Tag Murphy, who I met in my days in Japan and has long been a very insightful commentator. As I said at the Atlantic Economy conference, rather than trying to “jump start the economy,” which would take more radical restructuring than they are willing to engage in, the top wealthy might be better served to worry about managing low growth better. And for its many flaws, egalitarian Japan has muddled through a far more severe bubble and bust with more grace than we have.
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