{"id":45068,"date":"2019-04-05T08:16:18","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T13:16:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45068"},"modified":"2019-04-05T08:16:20","modified_gmt":"2019-04-05T13:16:20","slug":"the-japanification-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=45068","title":{"rendered":"The Japanification of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Japanification of the World<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Zombification \/ Japanification is not success; it is only the last desperate defense of a failing, brittle status quo by doing more of what’s failed<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A recent theme in the financial media is the Japanification of Europe<\/em>.<\/strong>Japanification<\/em> refers to a set of economic and financial conditions that have come to characterize Japan’s economy over the past 28 years: persistent stagnation and deflation, a low-growth and low-inflation economy, very loose monetary policy, a central bank that is actively monetizing debt, i.e. creating currency out of thin air to buy government debt and a government which funds “bridges to nowhere” and other stimulus spending to keep the economy from crashing into outright contraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The parallels with Europe are obvious, but they don’t stop there: the entire world is veering into a zombified financial, economic, social and political status quo<\/em> that is the core of Japanification<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While most commentators focus on the economic characteristics of Japanification<\/em>, social and political stagnation are equally consequential.<\/strong> If we only measure economic\/financial stagnation, it appears as if Japan and Europe are holding their own, i.e.maintaining the status quo via near-zero growth and near-zero interest rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if we measure social and political decay, the erosion is undeniable.<\/strong> Here’s one example. Few Americans have access to or watch Japanese TV, so they are unaware of the emergence of the homeless as a permanent feature of urban Japan. The central state propaganda media is focused on encouraging tourism, a rare bright spot in Japan’s moribund economy, and so you won’t find much media coverage of homelessness or other systemic signs of social breakdown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you watch Japanese detective \/ police procedural dramas, however, you’ll find constant references to homeless people and homeless encampments: detectives seek witnesses to a crime in the nearby homeless encampment; a homeless man living in an abandoned warehouse is found murdered, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Japanification of the World Zombification \/ Japanification is not success; it is only the last desperate defense of a failing, brittle status quo by doing more of what’s failed. A recent theme in the financial media is the Japanification of Europe.Japanification refers to a set of economic and financial conditions that have come to characterize Japan’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[124,127,391,452,25531,534,587,1302,14203,5252],"class_list":["post-45068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-central-banks","tag-charles-hugh-smith","tag-growth","tag-japan","tag-japanification","tag-monetary-policy","tag-of-two-minds","tag-status-quo","tag-zombie-economy","tag-zombification"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45068"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45069,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45068\/revisions\/45069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}